A story that I've had in my head since my sophomore year in high school just received an ending. You see, in my little world I come up with a scene that I think would be cool and I continue to develop that scene into a story. Usually moving on from the point that I start gives me a complete story with plot twists, a great opening, and an ending that makes sense for that story. Sometimes I come up with an idea that seems cool, but it never goes anywhere so the story ends up in the recycle bin in my brain. Of course I never take the recycle bin to the recycle center to get rid of it because I'm lazy and so it just sits there collecting dust.
Well, today one of those dust covered gems decided to resurface and say "Hey, look ma, I have an ending!" I really haven't thought much about this particular story since shortly after I got it into my head. Once I realized it was going no where I moved onto.... well, something else that went nowhere, but that hardly matters now. I moved on and just assumed that story would never see the light of day. Hell it would never even see the pages of my journal.
I was just sitting at my desk making new charts and spacing off. The Today show is droning on in the background when it struck me. "Hey, my main character is supposed to be a famous singer so duh, why wouldn't an interview be the best way to tie all my jumbled thoughts together?" They weren't interviewing anyone on the Today show to give me this insight, but I'm still going to credit them. Maybe it doesn't seem like much of a revelation to the outsiders (in other words, people not inside my head), but the moment that idea presented itself to me the rest of the story fell into my lap. Since the story only had one good scene in it that really was quite a gem to fall into my lap.
So, I can't exactly work on this project since I'm already plugging away at another project, but at least now the idea is mapped out and one day I'll be able to return to it. October is an awesome month for me getting ideas. I love this month.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Blogity
I probably should have titled this "Inconsequential Nonsense" to be more accurate, but I already filled in the title box and its not likely that I'll actually move my cursor back up to that box because I'm exceptionally lazy. My laziness is really the reason for the randomness that this blog is about to become. I have three totally unrelated observations that I've come across in the past month.
Alphabetical Insurance
This is the most recent observation I've come across, but probably the least interesting as well so that is why I'll start with it. I was at work earlier this week and overheard a conversation that my manager was having with a patient about her insurance. My manager had gotten a claim returned because the insurance company claimed they were not the primary insurance and they would not pay until after the primary insurance paid. Which is of course how it always has been. You see, we foolishly trust our patients to know which of their insurance is primary and which is secondary. Unfortunately most people are exceedingly stupid when it comes to health care even though they are paying a crap ton of money for it each year.
So the woman that my manager is speaking to is freaking out thinking their insurance is not going to pay (because of course she wasn't listening to a word my manager was saying). So, still freaking out she passes the conversation on to her husband who starts to spaz out because he's listening to his crazy wife as opposed to my manager (who actually knows what she's talking about). Eventually my manager is able to get across to these two exceptionally dumb people that she just wants to know which company is their primary so we can resubmit the claim.
The man insists that his Coventry Health Care insurance comes first because (and this so needs quotes) "It comes first in the alphabet."
Huh?
This man was sure that the way you tell the difference between your primary insurance and your supplemental insurance is by seeing which company would appear first in the phone book. Well, hell that just made our job a lot more convenient because Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska is way better at paying out than any other company.
Now, time for the amusing part of this story: The guys other insurance was Blue Cross Blue Shield. Let that sink in for a moment. BCBS is insurance company one and Coventry is insurance two. He claimed that Coventry had to come first because of the alphabet........ yep, go ahead and wrack your brain to figure out what alphabet he was using. The best my manager could come up with was the fact that his name came before his wife's name if you put them in alphabetical order and maybe that's how crazy brain processes information.
Pink Backpack
My two year old nephew really likes the color PINK. That's right a little boy liking PINK. GOD FORBID!! Anyway, so its the new school year and that means new school supplies and a new backpack for him. Naturally with his current obsession with all things pink he points to a pink backpack and claims he wants no other. My brother refused. REFUSED to buy him a pink backpack. I'm sure in his head he is trying to "protect" him from getting made fun of at the daycare by "mean kids". He's TWO years old. He goes to daycare with other TWO year old kids. You know, the age where you still don't care if your clothes match or not. Who's really going to be made fun of for this?
So, I've been dwelling on this for the past month because I still find it ridiculous that he can't have pink. Pink soda and pink frosted cupcakes are no problem, but him wearing pink is. Weird. So why doesn't the same hold true for little girls? A little girl can go into a store and say "I want the spider-man backpack" and most parents would think it odd, but not stop her or force her to get the pink and purple one with little ponies prancing on it. No one says you can't wear blue because its a boys color and the inequality annoys me. Colors are sexist. Not cool.
Pregnancy Dreams
My third observation of the month was the weirdness of the multiple pregnancy dreams I've been having. I looked it up on the dream encyclopedia and it assures me that it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm pregnant. In fact it gives this horrible description about changing views about something or new beginnings.... blah, whatever. The point is I've had weird pregnancy dreams. First, when I was still dreaming in third person (before I went back to writing in first person) I dreamt about a girl I knew down in Texas being pregnant with her first boy which I told her about and she responded by saying she couldn't have children anymore because she got her tubes tied. Well, okay. That's not a prophetic dream then. More recently I've been dreaming in first person. I haven't dreamed in first person since I was in high school. That was when I started writing all my stories in third person and my dreams followed that line of thinking. So, as some of you know, my newest story is written in first person and so I've begun dreaming in first person again. It took some getting used to.
So I had a dream a few weeks ago, probably closer to a month ago now, that I was pregnant. It was odd, but dreams usually are. It didn't feel like anything in the first dream. I just knew I was pregnant because my belly was all big and stuff. Then only a couple of weeks ago I had another pregnancy dream and this time I could actually feel something moving and it was all sorts of creepy. In the next chunk of dream I was no longer pregnant, but I also didn't have a baby so it was just strange overall.
So, what point am I trying to make with telling you all about my dreams? Well, I wasn't really, but after my friend told me she was pregnant I decided that was why I was having the dreams. I really am psychic. Sweet.
I'll post more randomness some other time. Thanks for reading.
Alphabetical Insurance
This is the most recent observation I've come across, but probably the least interesting as well so that is why I'll start with it. I was at work earlier this week and overheard a conversation that my manager was having with a patient about her insurance. My manager had gotten a claim returned because the insurance company claimed they were not the primary insurance and they would not pay until after the primary insurance paid. Which is of course how it always has been. You see, we foolishly trust our patients to know which of their insurance is primary and which is secondary. Unfortunately most people are exceedingly stupid when it comes to health care even though they are paying a crap ton of money for it each year.
So the woman that my manager is speaking to is freaking out thinking their insurance is not going to pay (because of course she wasn't listening to a word my manager was saying). So, still freaking out she passes the conversation on to her husband who starts to spaz out because he's listening to his crazy wife as opposed to my manager (who actually knows what she's talking about). Eventually my manager is able to get across to these two exceptionally dumb people that she just wants to know which company is their primary so we can resubmit the claim.
The man insists that his Coventry Health Care insurance comes first because (and this so needs quotes) "It comes first in the alphabet."
Huh?
This man was sure that the way you tell the difference between your primary insurance and your supplemental insurance is by seeing which company would appear first in the phone book. Well, hell that just made our job a lot more convenient because Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska is way better at paying out than any other company.
Now, time for the amusing part of this story: The guys other insurance was Blue Cross Blue Shield. Let that sink in for a moment. BCBS is insurance company one and Coventry is insurance two. He claimed that Coventry had to come first because of the alphabet........ yep, go ahead and wrack your brain to figure out what alphabet he was using. The best my manager could come up with was the fact that his name came before his wife's name if you put them in alphabetical order and maybe that's how crazy brain processes information.
Pink Backpack
My two year old nephew really likes the color PINK. That's right a little boy liking PINK. GOD FORBID!! Anyway, so its the new school year and that means new school supplies and a new backpack for him. Naturally with his current obsession with all things pink he points to a pink backpack and claims he wants no other. My brother refused. REFUSED to buy him a pink backpack. I'm sure in his head he is trying to "protect" him from getting made fun of at the daycare by "mean kids". He's TWO years old. He goes to daycare with other TWO year old kids. You know, the age where you still don't care if your clothes match or not. Who's really going to be made fun of for this?
So, I've been dwelling on this for the past month because I still find it ridiculous that he can't have pink. Pink soda and pink frosted cupcakes are no problem, but him wearing pink is. Weird. So why doesn't the same hold true for little girls? A little girl can go into a store and say "I want the spider-man backpack" and most parents would think it odd, but not stop her or force her to get the pink and purple one with little ponies prancing on it. No one says you can't wear blue because its a boys color and the inequality annoys me. Colors are sexist. Not cool.
Pregnancy Dreams
My third observation of the month was the weirdness of the multiple pregnancy dreams I've been having. I looked it up on the dream encyclopedia and it assures me that it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm pregnant. In fact it gives this horrible description about changing views about something or new beginnings.... blah, whatever. The point is I've had weird pregnancy dreams. First, when I was still dreaming in third person (before I went back to writing in first person) I dreamt about a girl I knew down in Texas being pregnant with her first boy which I told her about and she responded by saying she couldn't have children anymore because she got her tubes tied. Well, okay. That's not a prophetic dream then. More recently I've been dreaming in first person. I haven't dreamed in first person since I was in high school. That was when I started writing all my stories in third person and my dreams followed that line of thinking. So, as some of you know, my newest story is written in first person and so I've begun dreaming in first person again. It took some getting used to.
So I had a dream a few weeks ago, probably closer to a month ago now, that I was pregnant. It was odd, but dreams usually are. It didn't feel like anything in the first dream. I just knew I was pregnant because my belly was all big and stuff. Then only a couple of weeks ago I had another pregnancy dream and this time I could actually feel something moving and it was all sorts of creepy. In the next chunk of dream I was no longer pregnant, but I also didn't have a baby so it was just strange overall.
So, what point am I trying to make with telling you all about my dreams? Well, I wasn't really, but after my friend told me she was pregnant I decided that was why I was having the dreams. I really am psychic. Sweet.
I'll post more randomness some other time. Thanks for reading.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Something New
Well after the overwhelming (yawn) demand for more chapters on my last story I decided to let that one go. Not forever, but for now.
So instead I was bored at work and skimming through my random files looking for one of my older works to look at and work on. I had a few potential ideas for some of the older works that I had started and never finished, but I wasn't really in the mood to dive into any of the old stuff. I needed to get away from the old and jump into something new. And i did.
Out of no where a world began to unfold in front of me and the more I wrote the more I realized that this world was far superior the the world I had created for Eartha and Garrick. In fact I had come to realize that this was Eartha and Garrick's world and I had accidentally plopped them in someone else's world. My mistake. But this new world had a story that was more pressing than Eartha and she was still on the back burner. Before I could explain her story and bring her into this better world I had to explain someone else's first.
So as the world and the new girl's story began to open up to me I found some familiar faces. Some friendly and some... well, soulless ones as well. A character who has gone through a whole re-working has come back and is worse than ever. He has a new name and a new look and I think he's pretty bad-ass in a whole, "I'm a complete bastard who wants to ruin your life." kind of way. I'm twenty-five pages into this new tale and he's already a murderer (which who's to say he wasn't before page twenty-five, but this is the first one the readers get to see).
Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about this one. I think this idea is more straight forward and I think it will open up to a more suitable place for Eartha and Garrick to play out their stories. I'll keep you updated as it progresses, but I don't think there will be any chapter posting of this one. For those of you loyal enough to my writing... well, you know where to find me and my stories. For the rest of you.... why are you hear again?
So instead I was bored at work and skimming through my random files looking for one of my older works to look at and work on. I had a few potential ideas for some of the older works that I had started and never finished, but I wasn't really in the mood to dive into any of the old stuff. I needed to get away from the old and jump into something new. And i did.
Out of no where a world began to unfold in front of me and the more I wrote the more I realized that this world was far superior the the world I had created for Eartha and Garrick. In fact I had come to realize that this was Eartha and Garrick's world and I had accidentally plopped them in someone else's world. My mistake. But this new world had a story that was more pressing than Eartha and she was still on the back burner. Before I could explain her story and bring her into this better world I had to explain someone else's first.
So as the world and the new girl's story began to open up to me I found some familiar faces. Some friendly and some... well, soulless ones as well. A character who has gone through a whole re-working has come back and is worse than ever. He has a new name and a new look and I think he's pretty bad-ass in a whole, "I'm a complete bastard who wants to ruin your life." kind of way. I'm twenty-five pages into this new tale and he's already a murderer (which who's to say he wasn't before page twenty-five, but this is the first one the readers get to see).
Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about this one. I think this idea is more straight forward and I think it will open up to a more suitable place for Eartha and Garrick to play out their stories. I'll keep you updated as it progresses, but I don't think there will be any chapter posting of this one. For those of you loyal enough to my writing... well, you know where to find me and my stories. For the rest of you.... why are you hear again?
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Free Gas!
But not for you. Awww. Now that I've lost all the leeches who thought they were getting free gas I have a story (it's short I promise). So, let me start with a little back story. My mom and I have this new thing where we meet up every couple weeks and in a combined effort we make a dinner. She makes a dish and I make a dish and we hope the other one doesn't screw up somehow. Well, I have the main course tomorrow night and I'm lazy and haven't bought any of my groceries yet. I was planning on putting this task off even longer and getting it during my lunch break tomorrow, but I really hate doing any thing over my lunch break that doesn't consist of me being ultra lazy. So I drag myself away from my writing frenzy and go to the magnificent Hy-Vee down the street. It is an uneventful trip until I walking back out the door to my car.
A few slots down from my car I see a guy hovering near a car with flashers on and a cell phone to his ear. I think, "That sucks I should be nice and ask him if he needs help." Of course, if anyone know me like I know me I know that I'm not actually going to do this. I'm going to get in my car and think about how I should stop as I roll past his distress. I'm not a maliciously hateful person, but you always have that nagging voice in your head that says "he has a gun and if you try to help him he will shoot you and steal your car. Just roll on by and pretend you don't see him."
I have my car unlocked when a woman appears in front of me brandishing jumper cables that are already attached to her end. She's holding them out to me and even though there's only one thing she could possibly want I just stare at her kind of blankly. Where the hell did she come from anyway? So she asks the obvious and I, of course, pop the hood. This is something that takes absolutely no effort on my part so I don't mind being the good Samaritan for something that doesn't require any effort. I start my car and turn around and there stands flasher/cell phone guy. "Do you have any change I could borrow for gas?" I look down at my purse slung over my shoulder and then back up at him. I do this a couple times before finally admitting, "I don't carry cash." Now, of course, I look like a complete liar because it took me a second too long to answer. He walks away probably thinking, thanks for nothing.
By this time jumper cable lady is already done getting her car started and has detached herself from my car with a friendly wave. I slide the cap back on the dangerous part of my battery and slam the hood. Time for home. I see the guy still pacing by his car distressed. Well the least I can do is offer him a ride to the gas station since I looked like I just lied about not having cash. I circle the lot back to him and offer the ride. He explains how he has no cash for gas even if he gets to the station. I tell him I'll fill his little can so he can get home or wherever. His girlfriend comes out of the store at this point and rather pointedly says "Well hurry up." Nice. You're lucky you didn't ask me, bitch. I wouldn't have felt bad about saying no.
He climbs in and I drive quickly to the gas station. I can't put my music on because as much as I enjoy Wicked the Musical I don't think this guy was strictly the musical type of guy and I don't have any radio stations programed (why would I will an 80 GB iPod?). So, in all this silence I'm thinking of how this could blow up in my face. What if he snatches my iPod or my purse and runs? What if he punches me in the face and steals my car? This is why you don't take strangers to the gas station at 9:00 pm, moron.
We're back at the store and I am unharmed. Due to my silence the entire trip I'm pretty sure the guy was having similar thoughts run through his head. Why does she have the window rolled down and the AC on with no music? This girl is a serial killer and that's why she's not talking to me. She's going to run my ass into a telephone poll. This is why you don't ask for a ride to the gas station from a stranger at 9:00 pm, moron! We somehow both survived this traumatic good Samaritan story and I'm sure he won't run out of gas again any time soon.
A few slots down from my car I see a guy hovering near a car with flashers on and a cell phone to his ear. I think, "That sucks I should be nice and ask him if he needs help." Of course, if anyone know me like I know me I know that I'm not actually going to do this. I'm going to get in my car and think about how I should stop as I roll past his distress. I'm not a maliciously hateful person, but you always have that nagging voice in your head that says "he has a gun and if you try to help him he will shoot you and steal your car. Just roll on by and pretend you don't see him."
I have my car unlocked when a woman appears in front of me brandishing jumper cables that are already attached to her end. She's holding them out to me and even though there's only one thing she could possibly want I just stare at her kind of blankly. Where the hell did she come from anyway? So she asks the obvious and I, of course, pop the hood. This is something that takes absolutely no effort on my part so I don't mind being the good Samaritan for something that doesn't require any effort. I start my car and turn around and there stands flasher/cell phone guy. "Do you have any change I could borrow for gas?" I look down at my purse slung over my shoulder and then back up at him. I do this a couple times before finally admitting, "I don't carry cash." Now, of course, I look like a complete liar because it took me a second too long to answer. He walks away probably thinking, thanks for nothing.
By this time jumper cable lady is already done getting her car started and has detached herself from my car with a friendly wave. I slide the cap back on the dangerous part of my battery and slam the hood. Time for home. I see the guy still pacing by his car distressed. Well the least I can do is offer him a ride to the gas station since I looked like I just lied about not having cash. I circle the lot back to him and offer the ride. He explains how he has no cash for gas even if he gets to the station. I tell him I'll fill his little can so he can get home or wherever. His girlfriend comes out of the store at this point and rather pointedly says "Well hurry up." Nice. You're lucky you didn't ask me, bitch. I wouldn't have felt bad about saying no.
He climbs in and I drive quickly to the gas station. I can't put my music on because as much as I enjoy Wicked the Musical I don't think this guy was strictly the musical type of guy and I don't have any radio stations programed (why would I will an 80 GB iPod?). So, in all this silence I'm thinking of how this could blow up in my face. What if he snatches my iPod or my purse and runs? What if he punches me in the face and steals my car? This is why you don't take strangers to the gas station at 9:00 pm, moron.
We're back at the store and I am unharmed. Due to my silence the entire trip I'm pretty sure the guy was having similar thoughts run through his head. Why does she have the window rolled down and the AC on with no music? This girl is a serial killer and that's why she's not talking to me. She's going to run my ass into a telephone poll. This is why you don't ask for a ride to the gas station from a stranger at 9:00 pm, moron! We somehow both survived this traumatic good Samaritan story and I'm sure he won't run out of gas again any time soon.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
I Give Up
I officially hate Nebraska Furniture Mart. Anyone planning on buying electronics with them? DON'T! It's not worth the stress. If this had been the first time I had problems with them I probably would just be annoyed, but at this point I'm pissed. It seems to me that they have an awful lot of space and yet don't carry anything in stock. How does that work?
Several months ago my iPod was lost to the world. (There's a blog about it somewhere if you really care to read about that unfortunate time) I did some price checking so I could get the best deal on a replacement without buying used merchandise (that could've been stolen and wiped clean like my iPod probably was). I went to one of my favorite stores of all time, Best Buy, and noted that the 80 GB were now the same price as the 30 I had before. So, I kept that in mind when I went to other places to check prices. I went to the Mart and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was actually cheaper than my beloved Best Buy. Sweet, I'll take one of those! Um, nope. None in stock. What are you talking about? There are, like, 60 boxes behind the glass. Those are all 160 GB iPods. Great. Well you guys kinda suck. Oh well back to good ol' Best Buy. Frustrating, but I guess everyone sells out of the popular items once in a while. Best Buy managed to several on hand.
**This also wasn't the first time they let me down. I didn't find anything worthwhile at the Mart when I was computer shopping the year before and the Sony camera I bought was actually cheaper at Best Buy. Needless to say I haven't had the best of luck with the Mart ever.**
So we fast forward to July 25th now. I had done my research once again and found the Nikon D80 camera to be considerably cheaper at the Mart than Best Buy so I had collected many gift cards for my birthday and was ready to purchase the camera. I went to pick it up and the complete moron that's in the camera department is just putzing around. I asked him for one of the Nikon D80 and he says "Oh, we've been out of those for a long time. Did you need it right away?" (try to picture someone who sounds stoned the whole time). I tell him that I had a family reunion the next day and he opens the cabinet and there's a D80 in there. So he says, "this is a D80 but it has the bigger lens on it and this one's, like, $1000." Then he starts pulling all the components out of the more expensive one to look at it. I wasn't willing to pay $200 more just for a fancier lens (otherwise I would have gone with the one at Best Buy). So I asked him when the cheaper ones were coming in and he tells me "we are getting another shipment on July 31st. there should be some on that" and then he ignores me for another five minutes while he puts all the pieces back in the box.
So, I went in on the 31st and a really helpful woman is in the department this time. She says they had a shipment that day, but that the only one on that shipment had been ordered by someone else weeks ago and there were no extra ones. If I wanted one she could order it and have it in by the 5th. The asshole from Friday didn't mention this, of course. Basically I was too pissed to yell on Friday and the woman from the 31st was both helpful and informative and it totally wasn't her fault that her co-worker is completely useless so I couldn't rant and rave at her. It's bought and paid for now and I should have gotten it this afternoon.
Then I get the update today that they won't have any D80s in until the end of the month and there is at least one person on the waiting list who has been on there since May (that's right f'ing MAY!). So, this nice helpful woman is basically working for a crap company that doesn't order anything right. That's unfortunate. So, I get a hold of my best pair of yelling lungs (Kristi's mom) and get her assistance against the assholes at the Mart. You see, working in retail for 5 years has taught me two things 1)You cannot get cash back for gift cards. They try to pawn off store credit for something else if you want to return an item. Obviously I don't want anything from this store ever again so this policy is not going to go in my favor. 2) If you give a loud enough complaint you can pretty much get whatever you want (I don't normally condone this, but this was seriously the last straw). After maybe an hour Cindy had gotten them to refund the gift cards in the form of a check that they had initially claimed they would send out and I would get it in a week. Nope, not good enough. She convinced them they most certainly did not want her to come down to the store and start another storm where other people could hear so they agreed to have a check ready to be picked up... by Nick.
I'm sorry, but your crappy company was going to make me wait for at least a month for a camera I'd already paid for when I could easily go pick up the same camera at any other store that sold the damn things today. I don't think so. I don't want anything from your store so you're going to reimburse me everything I gave you, in cash, so I never have to step foot in your crappy department again. In the end, the check is in Nick's hands and I will be getting a camera from someone who actually can give it to me or at lest send it to me the moment I give them money. I'm not waiting until you finally manage to figure out where to order them from which all the other stores seemed to manage to figure out some time ago.
At the end of the day I have no problems with the employees of the store (except the douche bag who was working the camera department on July 25th. He could totally be fired and I would have no issue with that). But the company itself can kiss my ass and never expect further business from (at least in your electronics departments) me. Maybe after a considerable chunk of time I will be willing to shop for furniture from them.... but I don't see this happening any time soon. Your prices may be cheaper, but you just don't seem to have any stock. I could sell a computer I don't have for hundreds of dollars less too, but I don't because I have integrity and I wouldn't lie to someone about something I don't have. NFM, you kinda suck.
Several months ago my iPod was lost to the world. (There's a blog about it somewhere if you really care to read about that unfortunate time) I did some price checking so I could get the best deal on a replacement without buying used merchandise (that could've been stolen and wiped clean like my iPod probably was). I went to one of my favorite stores of all time, Best Buy, and noted that the 80 GB were now the same price as the 30 I had before. So, I kept that in mind when I went to other places to check prices. I went to the Mart and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was actually cheaper than my beloved Best Buy. Sweet, I'll take one of those! Um, nope. None in stock. What are you talking about? There are, like, 60 boxes behind the glass. Those are all 160 GB iPods. Great. Well you guys kinda suck. Oh well back to good ol' Best Buy. Frustrating, but I guess everyone sells out of the popular items once in a while. Best Buy managed to several on hand.
**This also wasn't the first time they let me down. I didn't find anything worthwhile at the Mart when I was computer shopping the year before and the Sony camera I bought was actually cheaper at Best Buy. Needless to say I haven't had the best of luck with the Mart ever.**
So we fast forward to July 25th now. I had done my research once again and found the Nikon D80 camera to be considerably cheaper at the Mart than Best Buy so I had collected many gift cards for my birthday and was ready to purchase the camera. I went to pick it up and the complete moron that's in the camera department is just putzing around. I asked him for one of the Nikon D80 and he says "Oh, we've been out of those for a long time. Did you need it right away?" (try to picture someone who sounds stoned the whole time). I tell him that I had a family reunion the next day and he opens the cabinet and there's a D80 in there. So he says, "this is a D80 but it has the bigger lens on it and this one's, like, $1000." Then he starts pulling all the components out of the more expensive one to look at it. I wasn't willing to pay $200 more just for a fancier lens (otherwise I would have gone with the one at Best Buy). So I asked him when the cheaper ones were coming in and he tells me "we are getting another shipment on July 31st. there should be some on that" and then he ignores me for another five minutes while he puts all the pieces back in the box.
So, I went in on the 31st and a really helpful woman is in the department this time. She says they had a shipment that day, but that the only one on that shipment had been ordered by someone else weeks ago and there were no extra ones. If I wanted one she could order it and have it in by the 5th. The asshole from Friday didn't mention this, of course. Basically I was too pissed to yell on Friday and the woman from the 31st was both helpful and informative and it totally wasn't her fault that her co-worker is completely useless so I couldn't rant and rave at her. It's bought and paid for now and I should have gotten it this afternoon.
Then I get the update today that they won't have any D80s in until the end of the month and there is at least one person on the waiting list who has been on there since May (that's right f'ing MAY!). So, this nice helpful woman is basically working for a crap company that doesn't order anything right. That's unfortunate. So, I get a hold of my best pair of yelling lungs (Kristi's mom) and get her assistance against the assholes at the Mart. You see, working in retail for 5 years has taught me two things 1)You cannot get cash back for gift cards. They try to pawn off store credit for something else if you want to return an item. Obviously I don't want anything from this store ever again so this policy is not going to go in my favor. 2) If you give a loud enough complaint you can pretty much get whatever you want (I don't normally condone this, but this was seriously the last straw). After maybe an hour Cindy had gotten them to refund the gift cards in the form of a check that they had initially claimed they would send out and I would get it in a week. Nope, not good enough. She convinced them they most certainly did not want her to come down to the store and start another storm where other people could hear so they agreed to have a check ready to be picked up... by Nick.
I'm sorry, but your crappy company was going to make me wait for at least a month for a camera I'd already paid for when I could easily go pick up the same camera at any other store that sold the damn things today. I don't think so. I don't want anything from your store so you're going to reimburse me everything I gave you, in cash, so I never have to step foot in your crappy department again. In the end, the check is in Nick's hands and I will be getting a camera from someone who actually can give it to me or at lest send it to me the moment I give them money. I'm not waiting until you finally manage to figure out where to order them from which all the other stores seemed to manage to figure out some time ago.
At the end of the day I have no problems with the employees of the store (except the douche bag who was working the camera department on July 25th. He could totally be fired and I would have no issue with that). But the company itself can kiss my ass and never expect further business from (at least in your electronics departments) me. Maybe after a considerable chunk of time I will be willing to shop for furniture from them.... but I don't see this happening any time soon. Your prices may be cheaper, but you just don't seem to have any stock. I could sell a computer I don't have for hundreds of dollars less too, but I don't because I have integrity and I wouldn't lie to someone about something I don't have. NFM, you kinda suck.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Birthday Wishes
There have been a few small parties in honor of my birth over the past week, but I figured I'd save them up and put them in one blog. It's just easier that way.
So last Thursday was the first family event. My mother told me that we would be celebrating my birthday at the same time that we were having Jason's farewell party. He's gone back to Tucson. Jason was about to go and get me a gift when I arrived and I stopped him telling him that the things he got me from around the world were a good enough birthday gift for anyone (plus he will eventually be getting me cash for the camera that got stolen from him on his trip). My mom told me that she ordered my gift, but it wouldn't be delivered until the end of the month. I didn't actually want her to get me anything since she has all her medical crap to be worrying about so I didn't even tell her what I wanted. Matt showed up about mid-way through dinner and told me he would get me a gift on his next day off... I didn't know workaholics got days off. So I got a chocolate on chocolate cake which I got to take a big chunk of home. I ate that big chunk in one day for fear that it would go stale before I got to finish it. I'm such a cow.
On Saturday I had Nick's family to celebrate with which was nice. We went to Ruby Tuesdays which beat out my mom's meal just because my mom insists on putting massive amounts of onions in everything (no offense, mom, but you should really know better by now). Once again I had the overly generous crowd for this one and managed to collect ninety more dollars in GC's towards my camera. At this rate I won't have to pay for any part of the camera. I also got some fantastic jelly bellies and I got to see the always fantastic Miss. Margaret. After lunch Nick gave me my presents from him ("They're not wrapped, though."). So I now have a bag for my future camera, some perfume that I really enjoy, a t-shirt that says Natures Loser with the lazy panda bear...... and a crap ton of booze. Nick gave me a bottle of Absolute vodka a couple weeks ago to take to a party and told me it was supposed to be part of my b-day gift.... but then he got me another bottle that was twice the size of the first and gave it to me on my birthday. Lots of good booze for me.
Last night I went to karaoke and got another hundred dollars GC for my camera from Hutch because he apparently forgot that we only spend fifty dollars on birthdays. I told him not to expect the same treatment next week for his own birthday since I can't afford it. He also bought me a drink while we were there. He tried to buy me a second, but I paid him back and reminded him that he got me a hundred dollar gift card to Nebraska Furniture Mart. Insane people getting me these huge gifts!
Tonight I will be going to dinner with my cousins (Ashley and Jaime for sure. I don't know about anyone else coming as of yet). That will be fun and we are planning on going out Saturday night as well. So far its been a pretty good birthday and I have nothing to complain about. Also my manager came into the office today and she brought me a mini-chocolate cake with a smiley face on it and one of my co-workers bought bagels for the office yesterday so I'm just getting nice and fat for my birthday. It's pretty fantastic.
So, Once again thank you to everyone who has been helping me celebrate and for spending too much on your gifts to me (this is seriously rivaling Christmas at this point). I have thoroughly enjoyed my birthday this year. You are all great and thank you again. It's gonna be a good day.
So last Thursday was the first family event. My mother told me that we would be celebrating my birthday at the same time that we were having Jason's farewell party. He's gone back to Tucson. Jason was about to go and get me a gift when I arrived and I stopped him telling him that the things he got me from around the world were a good enough birthday gift for anyone (plus he will eventually be getting me cash for the camera that got stolen from him on his trip). My mom told me that she ordered my gift, but it wouldn't be delivered until the end of the month. I didn't actually want her to get me anything since she has all her medical crap to be worrying about so I didn't even tell her what I wanted. Matt showed up about mid-way through dinner and told me he would get me a gift on his next day off... I didn't know workaholics got days off. So I got a chocolate on chocolate cake which I got to take a big chunk of home. I ate that big chunk in one day for fear that it would go stale before I got to finish it. I'm such a cow.
On Saturday I had Nick's family to celebrate with which was nice. We went to Ruby Tuesdays which beat out my mom's meal just because my mom insists on putting massive amounts of onions in everything (no offense, mom, but you should really know better by now). Once again I had the overly generous crowd for this one and managed to collect ninety more dollars in GC's towards my camera. At this rate I won't have to pay for any part of the camera. I also got some fantastic jelly bellies and I got to see the always fantastic Miss. Margaret. After lunch Nick gave me my presents from him ("They're not wrapped, though."). So I now have a bag for my future camera, some perfume that I really enjoy, a t-shirt that says Natures Loser with the lazy panda bear...... and a crap ton of booze. Nick gave me a bottle of Absolute vodka a couple weeks ago to take to a party and told me it was supposed to be part of my b-day gift.... but then he got me another bottle that was twice the size of the first and gave it to me on my birthday. Lots of good booze for me.
Last night I went to karaoke and got another hundred dollars GC for my camera from Hutch because he apparently forgot that we only spend fifty dollars on birthdays. I told him not to expect the same treatment next week for his own birthday since I can't afford it. He also bought me a drink while we were there. He tried to buy me a second, but I paid him back and reminded him that he got me a hundred dollar gift card to Nebraska Furniture Mart. Insane people getting me these huge gifts!
Tonight I will be going to dinner with my cousins (Ashley and Jaime for sure. I don't know about anyone else coming as of yet). That will be fun and we are planning on going out Saturday night as well. So far its been a pretty good birthday and I have nothing to complain about. Also my manager came into the office today and she brought me a mini-chocolate cake with a smiley face on it and one of my co-workers bought bagels for the office yesterday so I'm just getting nice and fat for my birthday. It's pretty fantastic.
So, Once again thank you to everyone who has been helping me celebrate and for spending too much on your gifts to me (this is seriously rivaling Christmas at this point). I have thoroughly enjoyed my birthday this year. You are all great and thank you again. It's gonna be a good day.
Monday, July 7, 2008
First Birthday of the Year
Yesterday I celebrated my first birthday of the year (it won't be the last) and yes I know it's kind of early to be starting the whole birthday parade, but this was a joint party so it is somewhat excusable. I must say, so far so good on the birthday front. Right now everyone has honored my requests for GC's which is usually my biggest task. :) I have collected just under half of what I need for what I'm aiming for this year which would be the Nikon D80 camera that I mentioned in a previous blog. How kick ass is that? and also to those of you handing out the big denominations of GC's SHAME ON YOU! You people are spending far too much on my silly birthday! (So, thank you everyone. I love you all, even though I now think you are insane.)
It was a hectic weekend since it was a holiday weekend and I must saying having a party to close it out was just about the most pleasant way to go. I got crap-tons of food to feed my pasta baby, a tasty slice of ice cream cake, and about a two hour treat of Rock Band. It was a good party and hopefully the ones to follow in the next couple weeks can live up to my early expectations of this year. :) I'll keep you updated.
Thanks to everyone who was there to celebrate my expulsion from my mother's uterus.
It was a hectic weekend since it was a holiday weekend and I must saying having a party to close it out was just about the most pleasant way to go. I got crap-tons of food to feed my pasta baby, a tasty slice of ice cream cake, and about a two hour treat of Rock Band. It was a good party and hopefully the ones to follow in the next couple weeks can live up to my early expectations of this year. :) I'll keep you updated.
Thanks to everyone who was there to celebrate my expulsion from my mother's uterus.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Newsworthy
You just know its a slow news week when you see a clip about a unicorn. Yes, I'm serious. A deer with a single horn in the middle of his forehead was born recently and it was one of the top stories mention on the news just a few minutes ago. A f'ing unicorn!
That's all I had to say.
That's all I had to say.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The First...
Don't know where I was going with this one, but I just found it among my other writtings and decided to post it here for anyone bored enough. It's not as bad as I remembered it, but I still have no clue where I was going with this one.
The first thing I remember was the sky, dark and clear. The moon was nowhere to be seen which meant it had already set or we were in the new moon phase. I couldn't really tell, but that somehow seemed important. To my right I could here the ocean swelling and receding, but the sand beneath me was dry and cool. I had no fear of the tide reaching this far up on the beach. The lids of my eyes scrapped up and down feeling like sandpaper until my eyes began to tear for moisture. How long had I been out here? I wiggled fingers and toes which were all bare and sand coated. Pain shot from all extremities inward pulling a gasp from deep in my chest. I clenched my fists and curled my toes until the pain finally subsided. Everything else was still aching, but at least I was able to move. When I was able to sit up and breathe normally I looked around to see if I could recognize my location. I couldn't, of course, but I did notice the boardwalk several feet to my left. I couldn't have been out here too long without someone noticing me. That was somewhat a relief.
The clothes I was wearing were unfamiliar and shredded. It looked like I had been mauled by a bear or some other wild animal, but there was no blood and I had no wounds bleeding or healing anywhere on my body. Whatever had destroyed my clothes apparently had no effect on me. I reached up to brush my hair back from my forehead and noticed for the first time that it was long, blonde and tangled to hell. Why did it shock me that I had blonde hair? That was the moment that the fear crept in. The more I tried to think about it the less I could actually recall about myself. I was sitting on some random beach in the middle of god knows what city or town and I had no idea who I was. There was nothing here that was going to give me any kind of a hint either. I didn't see a discarded purse that I could rifle through to gain more information about myself. What does one do? Where does one go when they have no idea....
I pushed the thoughts firmly to the back of my mind. I would just have to work with the knowledge I did have. It may be very little, but I wasn't completely helpless.
The first thing I remember was the sky, dark and clear. The moon was nowhere to be seen which meant it had already set or we were in the new moon phase. I couldn't really tell, but that somehow seemed important. To my right I could here the ocean swelling and receding, but the sand beneath me was dry and cool. I had no fear of the tide reaching this far up on the beach. The lids of my eyes scrapped up and down feeling like sandpaper until my eyes began to tear for moisture. How long had I been out here? I wiggled fingers and toes which were all bare and sand coated. Pain shot from all extremities inward pulling a gasp from deep in my chest. I clenched my fists and curled my toes until the pain finally subsided. Everything else was still aching, but at least I was able to move. When I was able to sit up and breathe normally I looked around to see if I could recognize my location. I couldn't, of course, but I did notice the boardwalk several feet to my left. I couldn't have been out here too long without someone noticing me. That was somewhat a relief.
The clothes I was wearing were unfamiliar and shredded. It looked like I had been mauled by a bear or some other wild animal, but there was no blood and I had no wounds bleeding or healing anywhere on my body. Whatever had destroyed my clothes apparently had no effect on me. I reached up to brush my hair back from my forehead and noticed for the first time that it was long, blonde and tangled to hell. Why did it shock me that I had blonde hair? That was the moment that the fear crept in. The more I tried to think about it the less I could actually recall about myself. I was sitting on some random beach in the middle of god knows what city or town and I had no idea who I was. There was nothing here that was going to give me any kind of a hint either. I didn't see a discarded purse that I could rifle through to gain more information about myself. What does one do? Where does one go when they have no idea....
I pushed the thoughts firmly to the back of my mind. I would just have to work with the knowledge I did have. It may be very little, but I wasn't completely helpless.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Rilo Kiley Concert
It was pretty damn fantastic. Me, Hutch and Liz went down to the Slowdown around 7 o'clock because the ticket said 8:00. Well that meant the doors opened at 8 which meant we had plenty of time to sit around and watch Hutch get wasted. Liz and I were pretty sure that Hutch wasted a good $80 on alcohol that night (alcoholic). It's a nice bar so no one minded that we were there so early. My only problem with that slip up was that I hadn't had time to eat before I left. You see, this was the day before my brother's birthday and I was somehow required to stop by his house (by my mother) to celebrate. Unfortunately it was one of those times where I just dropped a card off and hoped for the best. He wasn't getting home until after seven and I couldn't wait that long. This was when my mother decided to drop the cancer bomb on me which made me feel worse because I couldn't talk to her about it. I had a 20 minute drive home to change and get to Hutch's. So, this random tangent that I went off on had no point other than what I previously stated: I didn't eat and was starved for the rest of the evening.
There were two start up bands. The first was meh. Not bad, but not memorable and not what I was there for. The second band was much better and Hutch actually bought their CD because he liked them so much. Which brings me to my second tangent. The price of the merchandise was reasonable at this concert. A first in history (for me anyway)! A hoddie for $30? Unheard of! Not that I bought anything, but I'm just sticking my tongue out (figuratively) and the person who felt the need to comment on my last concert blog about how the band earns their money by selling merchandise and that's why its so expensive, mer. Well, it seems not all of them are quite as desperate to make money. I was actually tempted to purchase one of their awesome t-shirts, but at the end of the day I didn't want to carry it around with me all night or wait in line at the end of the night. Remember, I'm exceedingly lazy.
Then, finally, the reason we were at the Slowdown got on stage!
As, I'm sure you all know by now, I did not take this or any other picture that night. I found these on Flickr because photobucket was shocking lacking in photos from the omaha concert. These pictures were from the show the previous night, but close enough. Every time they played a song I was pretty sure they had played all my favorites and I was satisfied.... and then they would play another song and that would be another one of my favorites. It was pretty fantastic except (and yes this will be the third tangent of the evening) the fact that I wore heals. Now, I had a reason for torturing my feet, I promise. I've been to concerts before and there's always some asshole that's 12 feet tall standing right in front of me and this time I was going to be prepared, damnit! So, it turned out to be entirely unnecessary because I took them off so the people behind me could see over my head and I just looked between bouncing heads in front of me to see the stage. I guess that's about all there is to say. With so little to complain about when it comes to the show and the venue I guess this will be a shorter than normal blog. Rock on, Rilo Kiley! You guys were awesome live.
As, I'm sure you all know by now, I did not take this or any other picture that night. I found these on Flickr because photobucket was shocking lacking in photos from the omaha concert. These pictures were from the show the previous night, but close enough. Every time they played a song I was pretty sure they had played all my favorites and I was satisfied.... and then they would play another song and that would be another one of my favorites. It was pretty fantastic except (and yes this will be the third tangent of the evening) the fact that I wore heals. Now, I had a reason for torturing my feet, I promise. I've been to concerts before and there's always some asshole that's 12 feet tall standing right in front of me and this time I was going to be prepared, damnit! So, it turned out to be entirely unnecessary because I took them off so the people behind me could see over my head and I just looked between bouncing heads in front of me to see the stage. I guess that's about all there is to say. With so little to complain about when it comes to the show and the venue I guess this will be a shorter than normal blog. Rock on, Rilo Kiley! You guys were awesome live.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The "C" Word
Hey, dirty mind!
Cancer.
Oh, that "C" word. Yes, just as dirty, just as disgusting and tearing through our world and our lives. Yuck, what a piece of shit of a disease. Not that any disease is buckets of fun, but cancer just seems to be the crappiest because it goes anywhere and everywhere and they can't do much about it.... yet. This time its my mom dealing with it (along with millions of others, but I don't know them so I can't write about them).
It started with an ugly-ass mole on a forehead and ended up in the neck with thyroid cancer. Gee, those two things don't seem to be related? They're not, but that's how it was found. My mom had a mole quickly making itself known by growing out of her forehead like a unicorn's horn. She went to a dermatologist to have it removed and low and behold it had those little nasty cancer cells swimming around and screwing things up. So the doctor's decided some more testing was necessary and they were going to do that by taking a larger chunk of skin from her head. At the same time they were going to take a node out of her neck and her thyroid. I'm not sure how that decision was reached, but I'm assuming they did some test (an ultrasound or MRI or something along those lines) and saw a growth on her thyroid.
All did not go according to plan during surgery. The growth they had seen on her thyroid had wrapped itself around her trachea and when they were cutting it away they nicked her trachea. Damn. That sucks. So, a procedure that was supposed to be in and out turning into an ICU visit. They kept her sedated through the night and she was completely baffled the next day when she discovered most of a day had passed without her knowledge. They also still had the tube down her throat when I showed up at one o'clock in the afternoon. She was awake, choking and the doctor was no where to be found. The ridiculously understanding and nice nurse Jesse informed me that normal a tech could take it out, but since they had nicked the trachea during surgery they were being overly cautious and they wanted an anesthesiologist, a cardiologist and her surgeon present just in case anything went wrong and they had to put the tube back it. I understood that, but what I didn't understand was why the doctor wasn't coming now that she was awake. Shockingly the anesthesiologist was the first to show up (way to go guy) and the cardiologist was quick to follow. Then, forty-five minutes later, her doctor finally decides to amble his way up to the ICU (and no he didn't have a good excuse like surgery for why it took him forty-five minutes). They finally got the tube out of her throat and nothing happened, which is, of course, a good thing.
Final results finally came back and we discovered that the skin from her forehead was fine. The cancer hadn't gone into her lymph nodes and it seems all the cancer had been removed. Now, she has a "L" shaped scar right on her forehead, which she joked about in the hospital claiming that she was now officially a "Loser". The thyroid, however, had more cancer. Completely different and separate from the cancer that had been on her forehead. The whole thyroid had been removed, but they are going to be doing radiation therapy on her anyway. She has to completely change her diet. Apparently with thyroid cancer she cannot have any iodine in her diet for them to do the therapy. That translates into no iodized salt and no dairy. Holy crap, how much does that suck? Do you realize that damn near everything has salt in it? and in most cases that's the plain old iodized salt that she can't have?
Needless to say we are all still in the freak out stage of this mess, but we are figuring it all out and keeping everyone calm, especially my mom. I'm going to get her a bread maker so she can make her own salt-free bread and the online cookbooks have so many salt-less recipes that I have assured my mom that cooking foods won't be a problem. She is preparing for the fact that she will no longer be on her thyroid meds and therefore will be exhausted all the time and the fact that the radiation is going to leave a nice burn to go along with her choke scar from surgery. I'm trying to keep it light for her so she doesn't get depressed on top of all the other crap she's dealing with. I've already decided that she is going to be just fine and that I won't let her or anyone else say any different. It's three months of hell, but its not a lifetime and that's what matters, right?
Cancer.
Oh, that "C" word. Yes, just as dirty, just as disgusting and tearing through our world and our lives. Yuck, what a piece of shit of a disease. Not that any disease is buckets of fun, but cancer just seems to be the crappiest because it goes anywhere and everywhere and they can't do much about it.... yet. This time its my mom dealing with it (along with millions of others, but I don't know them so I can't write about them).
It started with an ugly-ass mole on a forehead and ended up in the neck with thyroid cancer. Gee, those two things don't seem to be related? They're not, but that's how it was found. My mom had a mole quickly making itself known by growing out of her forehead like a unicorn's horn. She went to a dermatologist to have it removed and low and behold it had those little nasty cancer cells swimming around and screwing things up. So the doctor's decided some more testing was necessary and they were going to do that by taking a larger chunk of skin from her head. At the same time they were going to take a node out of her neck and her thyroid. I'm not sure how that decision was reached, but I'm assuming they did some test (an ultrasound or MRI or something along those lines) and saw a growth on her thyroid.
All did not go according to plan during surgery. The growth they had seen on her thyroid had wrapped itself around her trachea and when they were cutting it away they nicked her trachea. Damn. That sucks. So, a procedure that was supposed to be in and out turning into an ICU visit. They kept her sedated through the night and she was completely baffled the next day when she discovered most of a day had passed without her knowledge. They also still had the tube down her throat when I showed up at one o'clock in the afternoon. She was awake, choking and the doctor was no where to be found. The ridiculously understanding and nice nurse Jesse informed me that normal a tech could take it out, but since they had nicked the trachea during surgery they were being overly cautious and they wanted an anesthesiologist, a cardiologist and her surgeon present just in case anything went wrong and they had to put the tube back it. I understood that, but what I didn't understand was why the doctor wasn't coming now that she was awake. Shockingly the anesthesiologist was the first to show up (way to go guy) and the cardiologist was quick to follow. Then, forty-five minutes later, her doctor finally decides to amble his way up to the ICU (and no he didn't have a good excuse like surgery for why it took him forty-five minutes). They finally got the tube out of her throat and nothing happened, which is, of course, a good thing.
Final results finally came back and we discovered that the skin from her forehead was fine. The cancer hadn't gone into her lymph nodes and it seems all the cancer had been removed. Now, she has a "L" shaped scar right on her forehead, which she joked about in the hospital claiming that she was now officially a "Loser". The thyroid, however, had more cancer. Completely different and separate from the cancer that had been on her forehead. The whole thyroid had been removed, but they are going to be doing radiation therapy on her anyway. She has to completely change her diet. Apparently with thyroid cancer she cannot have any iodine in her diet for them to do the therapy. That translates into no iodized salt and no dairy. Holy crap, how much does that suck? Do you realize that damn near everything has salt in it? and in most cases that's the plain old iodized salt that she can't have?
Needless to say we are all still in the freak out stage of this mess, but we are figuring it all out and keeping everyone calm, especially my mom. I'm going to get her a bread maker so she can make her own salt-free bread and the online cookbooks have so many salt-less recipes that I have assured my mom that cooking foods won't be a problem. She is preparing for the fact that she will no longer be on her thyroid meds and therefore will be exhausted all the time and the fact that the radiation is going to leave a nice burn to go along with her choke scar from surgery. I'm trying to keep it light for her so she doesn't get depressed on top of all the other crap she's dealing with. I've already decided that she is going to be just fine and that I won't let her or anyone else say any different. It's three months of hell, but its not a lifetime and that's what matters, right?
Monday, May 5, 2008
More Patient Tales
I thought this tale was best told via e-mail communications between my friend and I explaining what new annoyance I had at work today.
ME: So, I had a patient sitting out in the waiting room who was humming along (really loud) with the manwich jingle and then another commercial for Countryside Village came on and she started humming along with that one too. It was really obnoxious! I mean humming along at home or singing in your car is one thing, but that was bordering on me asking her to stop. This isn't karaoke or your living room. Stop being annoying please.
FRIEND: Manwich really? Wow! I would not blame you for saying something to her. More importantly though who actually knows the Manwich theme song!
ME: It's actually someone saying “Manwhich, Manwhich, I want Manwich” over and over again to a classical music tune. It's actually a pretty common tune. You'd probably know it if you heard it. But it was still annoying. Yeah, I can’t be that rude without getting fired, but I could see how it would get on someone's nerves to the point where they would blow up.
FRIEND: I guess if it was classical music it would make it that much harder to bare.
ME: Honestly, if this woman would have stopped when the commercial did I probably wouldn't have been so irritated with it, but she just kept humming through the next commercial until another one she knew came on :\
FRIEND: Was she senile?
ME: No. But she did get really excited when i took her back to her room. I said "we're going to have you here in room three" and she shoots her hands in the air and yells out "woo hoo! room three!" so she might just be on mass amounts of drugs.
FRIEND: Yes! Drugs! That is the only explanation for this! I never remember getting excited over which room the doctor put me in. I am going to do that next appointment!
ME: when they are walking you down the hall you should start muttering things like "come on room four, do i have a room four?" like Vegas roulette crazies.
FRIEND: I will do that while humming the Manwich theme song!
ME: have fun with that
FRIEND: You are my emergency contact so expect a phone call from my doctor committing me.
Okay, so is it just me or was this really an amusing tale?
ME: So, I had a patient sitting out in the waiting room who was humming along (really loud) with the manwich jingle and then another commercial for Countryside Village came on and she started humming along with that one too. It was really obnoxious! I mean humming along at home or singing in your car is one thing, but that was bordering on me asking her to stop. This isn't karaoke or your living room. Stop being annoying please.
FRIEND: Manwich really? Wow! I would not blame you for saying something to her. More importantly though who actually knows the Manwich theme song!
ME: It's actually someone saying “Manwhich, Manwhich, I want Manwich” over and over again to a classical music tune. It's actually a pretty common tune. You'd probably know it if you heard it. But it was still annoying. Yeah, I can’t be that rude without getting fired, but I could see how it would get on someone's nerves to the point where they would blow up.
FRIEND: I guess if it was classical music it would make it that much harder to bare.
ME: Honestly, if this woman would have stopped when the commercial did I probably wouldn't have been so irritated with it, but she just kept humming through the next commercial until another one she knew came on :\
FRIEND: Was she senile?
ME: No. But she did get really excited when i took her back to her room. I said "we're going to have you here in room three" and she shoots her hands in the air and yells out "woo hoo! room three!" so she might just be on mass amounts of drugs.
FRIEND: Yes! Drugs! That is the only explanation for this! I never remember getting excited over which room the doctor put me in. I am going to do that next appointment!
ME: when they are walking you down the hall you should start muttering things like "come on room four, do i have a room four?" like Vegas roulette crazies.
FRIEND: I will do that while humming the Manwich theme song!
ME: have fun with that
FRIEND: You are my emergency contact so expect a phone call from my doctor committing me.
Okay, so is it just me or was this really an amusing tale?
Thursday, April 24, 2008
A Year Later
It's almost a year since I began this blog. Go me.
That out of the way, now, what's the most obnoxious song you've ever had stuck in your head? I've pretty much always got something stuck in my head and I get a kick out of getting songs stuck in other people's heads. Unfortunately, only songs that people know usually get stuck in their head so my little game doesn't always work. Today my song is "Joanna" from Sweeny Todd. I have the CD on my iPod and that song played on Monday morning. It's been in my head since then. By far this is not the worst thing to happen to me. Since its the version from the movie its Johnny Depp's voice in my head and who would really complain about that?
So, what I've determined from this terrible game is that the worst song to torture people with is the Menard's jingle. "You save big money... you save big money.... when you shop Menard's!" If you're singing it now, plan to be singing it for the rest of the evening. A close second would have to be The Carpenters..... well all of their music is pretty terrible for getting stuck in your head, but specifically "Close to You" was in my head for about two weeks shortly after seeing Mirrormask (a Neil Gaiman movie). And for anyone who has seen "Cannibal the Musical" I'm sure you already have the tune of "It's a Schpedoinkle Day" running through your brain.
And surprisingly none of these songs were "the worst" song for me. When I was about fourteen years old I was introduced to the my favorite musical of all time, The Phantom of the Opera. After that I determined that Andrew Lloyd Webber's music must all be as great at the Phantom (this is not true, by the way, but I was 14. What can you do?) So I bought up all these musicals that had Andrew Lloyd Webber's name plastered somewhere on it. I asked my mother "So, what's Cats about?" and she told me that it didn't really have a story line. It was just a bunch of random songs. I, of course, scoffed at her and told her that it was impossible for a musical not to have a story line and walked away from her. I quickly found out that my mother wasn't lying. Cats is T.S. Elliot's poems put to music and there really is no point to the whole damn thing. But I was paid back for being mean to my mother about not knowing anything about musicals. The worst song I've ever had stuck in my head was "Jellical Cats" for almost an entire month. I now hate Cats with a passion and sometimes wish for the death of a certain composer who wrote that crappy catchy music.
I fully accept that this blog had no point except to hopefully get some crappy song stuck in my readers' heads. I just wanted to write about something since its been a year and I'm not posting my story up here anymore. I don't know where this blog will go in the next year, but feel free to try to get a craptastic song stuck in my head at some point.
That out of the way, now, what's the most obnoxious song you've ever had stuck in your head? I've pretty much always got something stuck in my head and I get a kick out of getting songs stuck in other people's heads. Unfortunately, only songs that people know usually get stuck in their head so my little game doesn't always work. Today my song is "Joanna" from Sweeny Todd. I have the CD on my iPod and that song played on Monday morning. It's been in my head since then. By far this is not the worst thing to happen to me. Since its the version from the movie its Johnny Depp's voice in my head and who would really complain about that?
So, what I've determined from this terrible game is that the worst song to torture people with is the Menard's jingle. "You save big money... you save big money.... when you shop Menard's!" If you're singing it now, plan to be singing it for the rest of the evening. A close second would have to be The Carpenters..... well all of their music is pretty terrible for getting stuck in your head, but specifically "Close to You" was in my head for about two weeks shortly after seeing Mirrormask (a Neil Gaiman movie). And for anyone who has seen "Cannibal the Musical" I'm sure you already have the tune of "It's a Schpedoinkle Day" running through your brain.
And surprisingly none of these songs were "the worst" song for me. When I was about fourteen years old I was introduced to the my favorite musical of all time, The Phantom of the Opera. After that I determined that Andrew Lloyd Webber's music must all be as great at the Phantom (this is not true, by the way, but I was 14. What can you do?) So I bought up all these musicals that had Andrew Lloyd Webber's name plastered somewhere on it. I asked my mother "So, what's Cats about?" and she told me that it didn't really have a story line. It was just a bunch of random songs. I, of course, scoffed at her and told her that it was impossible for a musical not to have a story line and walked away from her. I quickly found out that my mother wasn't lying. Cats is T.S. Elliot's poems put to music and there really is no point to the whole damn thing. But I was paid back for being mean to my mother about not knowing anything about musicals. The worst song I've ever had stuck in my head was "Jellical Cats" for almost an entire month. I now hate Cats with a passion and sometimes wish for the death of a certain composer who wrote that crappy catchy music.
I fully accept that this blog had no point except to hopefully get some crappy song stuck in my readers' heads. I just wanted to write about something since its been a year and I'm not posting my story up here anymore. I don't know where this blog will go in the next year, but feel free to try to get a craptastic song stuck in my head at some point.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Feeling Schizophrenic
I actually spelled that right on the first try which means I'm awesome and failing spelling in second grade didn't actually hold me back.
I am a monkey in the middle. Something entirely of my own doing, unfortunately. I got close to two people who no longer want to be close to each other. There I am between the two. For the most part they aren't making me choose a side, which is good because I don't intend to (Sorry guys, I love you both). There are obvious downfalls to not picking a side like being lied to and having to lie myself -- or withhold information if you want to pretty up the words. There are upsides to being in the middle too. I get to hear two sides of the story where most other people form their opinions based entirely on only half of a story. They enjoy their ignorance and pretend like the other party is 100% evil and their side is 100% perfect. The problem is there's no way that could ever be true. It's just easier to believe. Everyone has problems and everyone has relationship issues and everyone has their own version of "what really happened." What's making me feel so insane at this point is that the stories don't seem to match up very well. One person tells me events that happened that seem vital to the story and the other person tells me other things that person number one never mentioned. Then the parts that are about the same event seem vastly different depending on who you hear it from. Both sound perfectly rational when I talk to them and they sound like they are being honest, but obviously there is something missing otherwise the two stories would sound a little more similar.
Then there is the third party. The truly evil one. The one who instigates and makes a troubled relationship even worse. Granted, I haven't had the pleasure of hearing this person's version of events, but honestly if I were to tell the story from my stand point you wouldn't want to here The Evil One's version of events anyway. It would only be accurate and worthwhile if this person said "I'm a complete f*ck up and I should have stayed a million miles away." And even if those words had been uttered I would still want to slit this person's throat. There is no version that this person could portray that would put them in a good light. Yikes.
So I have all these conflicting stories and my own skewed opinions on the whole event. I have people calling me to find out details when they haven't been part of this story from the beginning and just now (now that its falling apart) want to jump in a attempt to be useful. In then end my head seems to be stretched to the furthest points and on the verge of cracking open. I want to cry for some, scream at others, kill one, and tell the other f*ck off. I'm feeling a range of emotions to go along with all those wants and at the end of the day I just want to pretend like this isn't happening. And its not even happening to me! I'm just a bystander! Innocent -- well kind of in this story.
I hope my head stays the way it is (ie not cracked or exploding) and I hope I didn't hurt any one else's head with this rant (that probably makes no sense to people on the outside).
I am a monkey in the middle. Something entirely of my own doing, unfortunately. I got close to two people who no longer want to be close to each other. There I am between the two. For the most part they aren't making me choose a side, which is good because I don't intend to (Sorry guys, I love you both). There are obvious downfalls to not picking a side like being lied to and having to lie myself -- or withhold information if you want to pretty up the words. There are upsides to being in the middle too. I get to hear two sides of the story where most other people form their opinions based entirely on only half of a story. They enjoy their ignorance and pretend like the other party is 100% evil and their side is 100% perfect. The problem is there's no way that could ever be true. It's just easier to believe. Everyone has problems and everyone has relationship issues and everyone has their own version of "what really happened." What's making me feel so insane at this point is that the stories don't seem to match up very well. One person tells me events that happened that seem vital to the story and the other person tells me other things that person number one never mentioned. Then the parts that are about the same event seem vastly different depending on who you hear it from. Both sound perfectly rational when I talk to them and they sound like they are being honest, but obviously there is something missing otherwise the two stories would sound a little more similar.
Then there is the third party. The truly evil one. The one who instigates and makes a troubled relationship even worse. Granted, I haven't had the pleasure of hearing this person's version of events, but honestly if I were to tell the story from my stand point you wouldn't want to here The Evil One's version of events anyway. It would only be accurate and worthwhile if this person said "I'm a complete f*ck up and I should have stayed a million miles away." And even if those words had been uttered I would still want to slit this person's throat. There is no version that this person could portray that would put them in a good light. Yikes.
So I have all these conflicting stories and my own skewed opinions on the whole event. I have people calling me to find out details when they haven't been part of this story from the beginning and just now (now that its falling apart) want to jump in a attempt to be useful. In then end my head seems to be stretched to the furthest points and on the verge of cracking open. I want to cry for some, scream at others, kill one, and tell the other f*ck off. I'm feeling a range of emotions to go along with all those wants and at the end of the day I just want to pretend like this isn't happening. And its not even happening to me! I'm just a bystander! Innocent -- well kind of in this story.
I hope my head stays the way it is (ie not cracked or exploding) and I hope I didn't hurt any one else's head with this rant (that probably makes no sense to people on the outside).
Monday, March 24, 2008
One More for the Road
"It wasn't until later, when I was washing the blood off my hands, I even knew they were dead."
That quote has been stuck in my head and its a good quote and may it now get stuck in your head. I have two blogs for you today and they will both go in one entry because I don't like posting two separate blogs in the same day. Nothing against those of you who do, I just find it easier to keep it in one blog. The first one is: Why I Hate Dogs and the second one is: Farewell, My Friend. Neither are fictional storied created by me so if you are one of the people skipping my blogs when they are stories you can keep on reading.
Why I Hate Dogs
Okay, so I don't hate dogs. Maybe I should re-title it to: Why Cat's are still better, but it's too late so we're sticking with Why I Hate Dogs.
This weekend I was forced (by major guilt trip) into house-sitting for my mother despite the fact that I think she has the most obnoxious pets on earth. That may be an exaggeration, but they are the most annoying pets I've ever had to deal with (with the exception of Tiffany, but that's totally Hutch's fault not the dog's). Back to my story.... so I'm house-sitting this weekend and my mother has two cats and a very annoying dog that I have to take care of. Because dogs are too stupid to be trained to go in a litter box I have to be over at my mother's house a minimum of three times a day to let the beast out to do its duty. This also means that I have to sit outside and watch the beast because otherwise it will run out into the yard and come right back to the door without peeing.... yes this dog is that stupid. On top of having to escort the dog to the grass to pee I noticed that she wasn't eating anything for the first day. I'm assuming she was partly depressed over the fact that the people who actually like her had left her care up to me. Eventually she did eat.... Half of the bowl in one sitting after starving herself for a day.... and promptly threw up in the living room. That included half of the rawhide which she had apparently swallowed in one piece. So, yum, who doesn't like cleaning up puke at 10 pm? Finally, on my last night of dog watch I spent the night. I had to be to work at 8 am and I was not going to get up an hour earlier just to escort the dog to her pee location again so I just stayed there. Unfortunately this meant I had a dog trying to spoon me all night. Not only did the beast take up half the bed she took to barking and growling in her sleep. I considered kicking her to make her stop, but I'm pretty sure that would have resulted in me being bitten in the ass so I suffered with a maximum of two hours sleep and smelling like dog in the morning.
And what annoying things did the cats do while I was there? One meowed a lot, the other hide the entire time and they got litter on the bathroom floor next to their litter box. Gee, which one sounds like the better pet to you?
Farewell, My Friend
My camera is gone. Forever. I didn't have it for very long and its sad to see it go, but it did its job well while it was around.
On the up note, I will be purchasing a new camera shortly after my birthday this year. For interested parties I will be taking birthday donations to the camera fund. Sweet. I will be getting a digital SLR this time. Even sweeeeeter. I figure if I'm not getting my bad boy back I might as well upgrade to something way cooler.
Look at how cool this camera is! So, even though it would have been far more convenient to have my old Sony back in a couple of months I will be more than happy to upgrade. I know I probably don't need something so extensive since most of my photo taking is stuff that could easily be taken with the Kodak I helped purchase for my roommate (that she never uses I might add) for her birthday, but hey, I like taking good pictures and now that I've had one good camera I can't seem to go back to mediocre. So, even though I don't think anyone who reads my blog are people who actually get me birthday gifts, know that I only want gift cards to Best Buy (it's just easier that way). So anyone interested in the full tale of where my Sony went head on over to my Myspace blog where I can freely unravel the whole tale because that one is slightly more private :)
Look at how cool this camera is! So, even though it would have been far more convenient to have my old Sony back in a couple of months I will be more than happy to upgrade. I know I probably don't need something so extensive since most of my photo taking is stuff that could easily be taken with the Kodak I helped purchase for my roommate (that she never uses I might add) for her birthday, but hey, I like taking good pictures and now that I've had one good camera I can't seem to go back to mediocre. So, even though I don't think anyone who reads my blog are people who actually get me birthday gifts, know that I only want gift cards to Best Buy (it's just easier that way). So anyone interested in the full tale of where my Sony went head on over to my Myspace blog where I can freely unravel the whole tale because that one is slightly more private :)Two short blogs in one fabulous entry. I hope my stream of consciousness didn't hurt any one's brains.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Randomness III
Okay, so I lied. Apparently I will be making up for last month's lack of blogging and I will be putting up a few more blogs than normal. Not by any design of course, just because I have more to talk about than normal and very little to do while at work. So there it is.
I went up to Vermilion for St. Patrick's Day and realized something completely horrible. Downloading Joni Mitchell's entire discography was probably not the smartest thing I've done to my poor iPod. I'm the type of person that likes a random mix of my music at all times. I don't really listen to one artist for a significant period of time and nothing else. Since random in iPod land isn't really all that random I tend to stick with alphabetical order by song title. This gives me the most random order you can get from the iPod -- unless you've downloaded someone's discography who has been around since the 60s. Then its a really bad idea to have in alphabetical. After hearing 8 different versions of "Case of You" I got pissed off because I thought my iPod was repeating one song. Nope. Have about 12 live albums or greatest hits albums makes it that you have the same song repeated multiple times. I guess it's time to edit my iPod list and possibly delete some of the repeats.
My dad called not too long ago -- well that's not true. I called him. For his birthday. Anyway, he asked me two somewhat strange questions that I now feel the need to mention in blogland. First, he asked me about "that Delilah song" (Plain White T's for those of you who didn't turn on your radio for about two months at the end of last year/beginning of this year). I tell him it's by the Plain White T's and that I used to like it until I heard it four times in one day on the same radio station -- and since I rarely listen to the radio that means they played it about twenty other times that same day and I just didn't hear it. He mentions that he really likes the song and that he's wondering whether he would like their other music too. I casually reply that I'll look some of their music up on-line to see if he would like anything else they've done. I've come to the conclusion that he would, in fact, not like a single other song off that entire album. I'll burn him that song with some Joni Mitchell and call it a day.
The other odd thing he asked me about was (and I quote) "what's this yoga stuff all about?". Apparently, dad has been living in a cave for the past decade. I tell him the basics of yoga, blah blah, its an ancient practice that works on a person's strength, flexibility, and balance and helps with breathing and meditation techniques (and I'm basing this off of what my yoga instructor says not any actual research done on my part). I ask him why he wants to know and he mentions that there is a class at the Y and he was wondering if it would be good for him. I tell him its good for everyone, but that doesn't mean he's going to like it. So I tell him that I will give him a video that I started out on so he can try it before he pays for a class that he won't go to.
I forgot my nine year old sister's birthday. I'm special. I called her two days later and she didn't seem too pissed about it. I told her I'd give her a birthday gift when she gave me cookies. Yes, I'm holding her birthday present hostage until I get my GS cookies. Totally appropriate. Did I mention that I haven't actually gotten the gift yet and that they will be coming into town shortly to deliver cookies so it's more my unwillingness to pay for shipping when I know they will be up here than the fact that I'm actually holding a gift hostage.
The doctor has been out of the office for a little over two weeks now and I'm already dreading their return. Not because of the work, but because before they left our nurse was kind of being a great big bitch to me. I don't know if that is going to be the same when the return or if vacation time relaxed them and they were just stressed out about packing and flying and whatnot. Either way I'm hoping for the best, but kind of expecting the worst. Oh well, we will see next week.
Have a good day :P
I went up to Vermilion for St. Patrick's Day and realized something completely horrible. Downloading Joni Mitchell's entire discography was probably not the smartest thing I've done to my poor iPod. I'm the type of person that likes a random mix of my music at all times. I don't really listen to one artist for a significant period of time and nothing else. Since random in iPod land isn't really all that random I tend to stick with alphabetical order by song title. This gives me the most random order you can get from the iPod -- unless you've downloaded someone's discography who has been around since the 60s. Then its a really bad idea to have in alphabetical. After hearing 8 different versions of "Case of You" I got pissed off because I thought my iPod was repeating one song. Nope. Have about 12 live albums or greatest hits albums makes it that you have the same song repeated multiple times. I guess it's time to edit my iPod list and possibly delete some of the repeats.
My dad called not too long ago -- well that's not true. I called him. For his birthday. Anyway, he asked me two somewhat strange questions that I now feel the need to mention in blogland. First, he asked me about "that Delilah song" (Plain White T's for those of you who didn't turn on your radio for about two months at the end of last year/beginning of this year). I tell him it's by the Plain White T's and that I used to like it until I heard it four times in one day on the same radio station -- and since I rarely listen to the radio that means they played it about twenty other times that same day and I just didn't hear it. He mentions that he really likes the song and that he's wondering whether he would like their other music too. I casually reply that I'll look some of their music up on-line to see if he would like anything else they've done. I've come to the conclusion that he would, in fact, not like a single other song off that entire album. I'll burn him that song with some Joni Mitchell and call it a day.
The other odd thing he asked me about was (and I quote) "what's this yoga stuff all about?". Apparently, dad has been living in a cave for the past decade. I tell him the basics of yoga, blah blah, its an ancient practice that works on a person's strength, flexibility, and balance and helps with breathing and meditation techniques (and I'm basing this off of what my yoga instructor says not any actual research done on my part). I ask him why he wants to know and he mentions that there is a class at the Y and he was wondering if it would be good for him. I tell him its good for everyone, but that doesn't mean he's going to like it. So I tell him that I will give him a video that I started out on so he can try it before he pays for a class that he won't go to.
I forgot my nine year old sister's birthday. I'm special. I called her two days later and she didn't seem too pissed about it. I told her I'd give her a birthday gift when she gave me cookies. Yes, I'm holding her birthday present hostage until I get my GS cookies. Totally appropriate. Did I mention that I haven't actually gotten the gift yet and that they will be coming into town shortly to deliver cookies so it's more my unwillingness to pay for shipping when I know they will be up here than the fact that I'm actually holding a gift hostage.
The doctor has been out of the office for a little over two weeks now and I'm already dreading their return. Not because of the work, but because before they left our nurse was kind of being a great big bitch to me. I don't know if that is going to be the same when the return or if vacation time relaxed them and they were just stressed out about packing and flying and whatnot. Either way I'm hoping for the best, but kind of expecting the worst. Oh well, we will see next week.
Have a good day :P
Friday, March 14, 2008
The Power
I'm depressed.
I finished yet another book. Soon my books will push me out of my home. I'm not depressed because I finished the book, although that is not completely out of the reach of possibility. Often I have been depressed to finish a story. I know I'm not alone when I say I rush through a book to get the whole tale and then am sad when there's nothing more to read. You grow attached to these people that you're reading about and you want to know where they go from here. I'm depressed because the book that I just finished had the power. The power to suck me it. The power to make me care. The power to make me cry. Not that making me cry is a hard task to accomplish. I cry during TV, during movies, watching a Campbell's soup commercial. I've cried about a character that I killed off. I had the power to keep them going and I killed them off and then cried about it. Of course me being a typical crazy girl it's socially acceptable for me to cry at Campbell's soup commercials.
This book really got to me and that is not an easy feat. Normally I can relate to a character just enough to spin a world of imagination in my head to play out the story. Once the story is done I can put the book on the shelf and say, 'that was good, what's next?' With my most current read I actually attached myself to many of the characters. A few hours ago I threw my book down in anger because the character was being a child and acting stupid. To the point that I wanted to reach into the book and slap her. Then I picked back up and connected again. Feeling happy with her, feeling angry with her, feeling sad with her.... truly attaching myself to this person that doesn't exist. And when one of the characters died (even as I knew he would from the beginning) I felt that emptiness. And then the book was over and it stuck with me. So I decided to write to you about it.
It's not even the connection that moved me so much when I thought about it. I've connected like that before. So much so that I couldn't read the sequel of a book because I was too upset about the ending of the first. It doesn't matter which story I'm talking about because it's really just the power that gets to me. The power of the author to make me care about her imagination. I want that power. I want to make people have emotions towards something that doesn't exist except in my head and now their's. It's not real and it doesn't make the world spin. It doesn't affect daily life and its not going to be there when you close the cover again, but for those moments you cared about me. About my imagination. I want that.
I finished yet another book. Soon my books will push me out of my home. I'm not depressed because I finished the book, although that is not completely out of the reach of possibility. Often I have been depressed to finish a story. I know I'm not alone when I say I rush through a book to get the whole tale and then am sad when there's nothing more to read. You grow attached to these people that you're reading about and you want to know where they go from here. I'm depressed because the book that I just finished had the power. The power to suck me it. The power to make me care. The power to make me cry. Not that making me cry is a hard task to accomplish. I cry during TV, during movies, watching a Campbell's soup commercial. I've cried about a character that I killed off. I had the power to keep them going and I killed them off and then cried about it. Of course me being a typical crazy girl it's socially acceptable for me to cry at Campbell's soup commercials.
This book really got to me and that is not an easy feat. Normally I can relate to a character just enough to spin a world of imagination in my head to play out the story. Once the story is done I can put the book on the shelf and say, 'that was good, what's next?' With my most current read I actually attached myself to many of the characters. A few hours ago I threw my book down in anger because the character was being a child and acting stupid. To the point that I wanted to reach into the book and slap her. Then I picked back up and connected again. Feeling happy with her, feeling angry with her, feeling sad with her.... truly attaching myself to this person that doesn't exist. And when one of the characters died (even as I knew he would from the beginning) I felt that emptiness. And then the book was over and it stuck with me. So I decided to write to you about it.
It's not even the connection that moved me so much when I thought about it. I've connected like that before. So much so that I couldn't read the sequel of a book because I was too upset about the ending of the first. It doesn't matter which story I'm talking about because it's really just the power that gets to me. The power of the author to make me care about her imagination. I want that power. I want to make people have emotions towards something that doesn't exist except in my head and now their's. It's not real and it doesn't make the world spin. It doesn't affect daily life and its not going to be there when you close the cover again, but for those moments you cared about me. About my imagination. I want that.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
In the Cycle
Anyone who fancies themselves an artist will understand the cycle. You know the one, I promise. It's the constant cycle of inspiration one moment and writer's block the next. It doesn't matter if you are a painter, a poet, a writer, or whatever else you want to call yourself. We all have our moments of dead time and our furious moment of enlightenment. We all feel a little bipolar at times. Caffeine induced hyperactivity on Monday and "maybe if I stab myself with my pen I'll get inspired" on Thursday.
I constantly have ideas racing through my head for the next great story, but I often can't muster up the energy to put it to paper (or computer in most cases anymore). I've been stuck in the "self loathing" part of the cycle for a while now. I hate everything I write, I find fault in everything I draw and don't even get me started on my painting disability. 
(This one is already being disposed of via my cousin who promised to take it in. Hey, canvases are far too expensive to just toss into the dumpster I have to find homes for them.)
(This one is already being disposed of via my cousin who promised to take it in. Hey, canvases are far too expensive to just toss into the dumpster I have to find homes for them.)Mostly, I've not been happy with the one story I managed to finish. Yes, I am talking about the one I post chapters here on my blog. I haven't felt the need to post a chapter on here for quite some time. If you read my blog you'll notice a surprising lack of blogging throughout the month of February. Other than the fact that I loathe the month in general I didn't want to post any more chapters and so I neglected the whole blog for a month. And no, I don't plan to make it up by posting fifteen blogs this month. I'm just stating the obvious fact that I haven't posted much since January.
Well now, as the weather is warming and my mood is inevitably improving, I've decided to pull myself out of my funk for the hundredth time and start again. That's why I painted the picture above. I may find faults with it in all the details, but the fact that I did it in less than two hours suggests that I may be getting the blood flowing back into my mind and my fingers. I've been downloading lots of music to my iPod the past couple of weeks (so much so that there is more music that I don't know on there than what I do know). During the time that it takes to put on iTunes and then transfer to my iPod I've been pulling open Word a lot. It's all been random, both the story I choose to write and what part of the story I'm writing, but I figure its better than not writing at all. I even e-mailed myself what I started last night so I can continue to do that instead of playing classic sim city and getting all pissy with the earthquakes burn down half of my city. By the way, I can totally understand why people stopped playing the original sim city now.
So, I don't know if I will go back to posting chapters of my story on here or if I'll ever post any bits of my other stories that I've been working on, but know that I'm still trying and hopefully someday soon there will be a book that was poured onto the page by my leaking brain.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
What Happened to February?
I got lazy and pissy about writing. I've been writing more on some of my other stories, but as for the blog I just get sick of people saying they want to read my stuff but when I tell them they can read it on my blog any time they never check it out. Don't bullshit me. I don't care enough. If you want to read what I write read it if you don't, quit pretending. You're wasting my time. Now that I've got that out in the open let's get down to some serious bitching. I've had enough extension drama (meaning not my own personal drama, but people I know and their drama that affects me indirectly) to fill up six blogs, but I think I'll start out with my own personal drama first:
Speeding Ticket
I'm fond of driving about 70 mph on the express way as often as possible. You see, when you hate people as much as I do you don't want to be around them or their crap-ass vehicle. The problem with this is the express way is only 55 mph on the majority of it -- well what I drive of it. Well, as I'm sure most of you understand, you do something bad often enough eventually you'll probably get caught. The last time my lead foot was caught was about 5 years ago... possibly more and that's mostly because I didn't know the speed limit on that road. Still my fault, of course.
Less than a week ago they had a "selective enforcement" (all of you not part of the police force can read 'speed trap') on Dodge between 144th and 132nd. Since I was topped off at about a nice round 72 mph I was pretty positive The Man was pulling off the shoulder just for me. Lo and behold my psychic ability did not fail me and soon the lights were flashing. Oh well. Here's my ticket.
$160 or $90 + a loss of 8 hours that I will never get back. It was a toss up. A serious toss up. In the end I opted for the brain dead class. I'm sure there are worse ways to waste two evenings and I'll let you know as soon as I figure out what exactly that would be.
Last night was my first torture course and I was greeted with assholes and lonely old people who show up because they have no friends and want to torture the rest of us. Assholes first: Our instructor (a pretty cool guy so far) notes at the beginning of class to not say anything that could be considered offensive to anyone else in the class. So as we go around the classroom saying our name and why we were there A-hole in the back of the room decides to point out that the three women next to him were all speeders proving that women are worse lead foot drivers than men (unquestionable proof, indeed). Now this may or may not be true, but seeing how half of the class was female and the was bound to be at least one of them to take offense to that comment this caused a problem that should have never happened. First there was a number of disgusted sighs from all the women and all the men who know better than to say something so asinine. So after he reveals that he ran a red light one of the offended girls in the front of the class decides to announce "Well, I guess that proves that all men are f'ing color blind."
Nice. And this all could have been averted had the a-hole listened to the teacher in the first place. Color blind and deaf and apparently a little slow.
Then we have the lonely old person sitting directly in front of me. Every time this woman opened her mouth my ears were assaulted with five minutes of nonsense. She was one of those people who felt wronged because she got caught doing something wrong, but didn't want to pay the consequences -- because there was no way that man could have radar-ed her vehicle and pulled her over at the same time! Of course she doesn't deny that she was speeding, just that there was no way he could have caught her doing it. The most logical assumption. And when our far too patient teacher tried to explain anything to her she would continue to talk over him.
Every other time our teacher spoke she had something to add -- and ten minutes later when she finally ran out of breath the class could continue. Irrelevant topics were often brought up by this witch and we were unable to get out as early as we should of, I am certain, because of her babbling. Look, I know your old and don't have any friends left, but I have better places to be and more interesting people to listen to. Shut the F up.
Ahhhh, I feel better.
That's it for personal drama.... on to more exciting tales! Actually I don't plan to write any specifics because I don't feel the need to hand out personal info to the world unless necessary. So just a few random comments for all the drama makers out there:
My cousins: I love you both. "We can work it out"
My Uncle: Thank you again for the program.
My Best Friend (female): Breathe!
My Best Friend (male): You're still a great big dork and that's okay. Go make the world fatter.
My Ex: You're dumb. It's okay, just accept it.
My love: thank you for listening.
That's all. Have a nice day.
Speeding Ticket
I'm fond of driving about 70 mph on the express way as often as possible. You see, when you hate people as much as I do you don't want to be around them or their crap-ass vehicle. The problem with this is the express way is only 55 mph on the majority of it -- well what I drive of it. Well, as I'm sure most of you understand, you do something bad often enough eventually you'll probably get caught. The last time my lead foot was caught was about 5 years ago... possibly more and that's mostly because I didn't know the speed limit on that road. Still my fault, of course.
Less than a week ago they had a "selective enforcement" (all of you not part of the police force can read 'speed trap') on Dodge between 144th and 132nd. Since I was topped off at about a nice round 72 mph I was pretty positive The Man was pulling off the shoulder just for me. Lo and behold my psychic ability did not fail me and soon the lights were flashing. Oh well. Here's my ticket.
$160 or $90 + a loss of 8 hours that I will never get back. It was a toss up. A serious toss up. In the end I opted for the brain dead class. I'm sure there are worse ways to waste two evenings and I'll let you know as soon as I figure out what exactly that would be.
Last night was my first torture course and I was greeted with assholes and lonely old people who show up because they have no friends and want to torture the rest of us. Assholes first: Our instructor (a pretty cool guy so far) notes at the beginning of class to not say anything that could be considered offensive to anyone else in the class. So as we go around the classroom saying our name and why we were there A-hole in the back of the room decides to point out that the three women next to him were all speeders proving that women are worse lead foot drivers than men (unquestionable proof, indeed). Now this may or may not be true, but seeing how half of the class was female and the was bound to be at least one of them to take offense to that comment this caused a problem that should have never happened. First there was a number of disgusted sighs from all the women and all the men who know better than to say something so asinine. So after he reveals that he ran a red light one of the offended girls in the front of the class decides to announce "Well, I guess that proves that all men are f'ing color blind."
Nice. And this all could have been averted had the a-hole listened to the teacher in the first place. Color blind and deaf and apparently a little slow.
Then we have the lonely old person sitting directly in front of me. Every time this woman opened her mouth my ears were assaulted with five minutes of nonsense. She was one of those people who felt wronged because she got caught doing something wrong, but didn't want to pay the consequences -- because there was no way that man could have radar-ed her vehicle and pulled her over at the same time! Of course she doesn't deny that she was speeding, just that there was no way he could have caught her doing it. The most logical assumption. And when our far too patient teacher tried to explain anything to her she would continue to talk over him.
Every other time our teacher spoke she had something to add -- and ten minutes later when she finally ran out of breath the class could continue. Irrelevant topics were often brought up by this witch and we were unable to get out as early as we should of, I am certain, because of her babbling. Look, I know your old and don't have any friends left, but I have better places to be and more interesting people to listen to. Shut the F up.
Ahhhh, I feel better.
That's it for personal drama.... on to more exciting tales! Actually I don't plan to write any specifics because I don't feel the need to hand out personal info to the world unless necessary. So just a few random comments for all the drama makers out there:
My cousins: I love you both. "We can work it out"
My Uncle: Thank you again for the program.
My Best Friend (female): Breathe!
My Best Friend (male): You're still a great big dork and that's okay. Go make the world fatter.
My Ex: You're dumb. It's okay, just accept it.
My love: thank you for listening.
That's all. Have a nice day.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Opening Night
So....
For anyone who's interested and doesn't mind spending money to see people mess up a lot go to an opening night show of, well I'm assuming, any show ever put on the stage. This being the third time seeing The Phantom of the Opera on the stage I didn't mind -- in fact, it was really entertaining.
Most of the mistakes were made by the stage techs (lighting people, prop movers and whatnot), but there were a few made by the actors as well. The most noticeable mistake of the night would have to be the prologue scene transitioning to the opening scene. For anyone who has seen it I'm sure you know what I'm talking about and for those of you who haven't here's a brief description:
The prologue takes place during an action at the closed down opera house. Everything is draped in dark cloth including a broken chandelier on the stage. During the transition there is supposed to be the illusion of going back in time to when the chandelier wasn't broken and the opera house was in its prime. They do this by pulling all the grey sheets off of everything and raising the chandelier back to the ceiling. In all other productions that I've seen this transition runs very smooth and it does seem a little like magic -- this time it was anything but magic. Two of the sheets didn't want to pull away and it took then the entire intro song to pull one of the sheets off and the other remained half draped down one of the walls through the entire first act. When it was finally pulled down during intermission the audience cheered. Apparently I wasn't the only person who knew how it was supposed to look.
There was a couple lighting issues, one being the moment a spotlight shone in an area that there was no action or actors and a couple of moments where the spot wasn't following the actor very well -- which I don't blame the spot for at all. I did spotlight for a high school play and I remember how frustrating it is when an actor does stuff different than what they did in rehearsal.
Then there were the actor mistakes: lines missed or screwed up and the moment when several people ran on stage a little bit before their scene. Overall a very amusing production.
I still love the show and always will, but I wouldn't mind seeing it a second time after they've worked all the kinks out.
The rest of the night was much like any other night out with my mother and for anyone who knows what that means -- well you know what that means. Enjoy a good laugh.
For anyone who's interested and doesn't mind spending money to see people mess up a lot go to an opening night show of, well I'm assuming, any show ever put on the stage. This being the third time seeing The Phantom of the Opera on the stage I didn't mind -- in fact, it was really entertaining.
Most of the mistakes were made by the stage techs (lighting people, prop movers and whatnot), but there were a few made by the actors as well. The most noticeable mistake of the night would have to be the prologue scene transitioning to the opening scene. For anyone who has seen it I'm sure you know what I'm talking about and for those of you who haven't here's a brief description:
The prologue takes place during an action at the closed down opera house. Everything is draped in dark cloth including a broken chandelier on the stage. During the transition there is supposed to be the illusion of going back in time to when the chandelier wasn't broken and the opera house was in its prime. They do this by pulling all the grey sheets off of everything and raising the chandelier back to the ceiling. In all other productions that I've seen this transition runs very smooth and it does seem a little like magic -- this time it was anything but magic. Two of the sheets didn't want to pull away and it took then the entire intro song to pull one of the sheets off and the other remained half draped down one of the walls through the entire first act. When it was finally pulled down during intermission the audience cheered. Apparently I wasn't the only person who knew how it was supposed to look.
There was a couple lighting issues, one being the moment a spotlight shone in an area that there was no action or actors and a couple of moments where the spot wasn't following the actor very well -- which I don't blame the spot for at all. I did spotlight for a high school play and I remember how frustrating it is when an actor does stuff different than what they did in rehearsal.
Then there were the actor mistakes: lines missed or screwed up and the moment when several people ran on stage a little bit before their scene. Overall a very amusing production.
I still love the show and always will, but I wouldn't mind seeing it a second time after they've worked all the kinks out.
The rest of the night was much like any other night out with my mother and for anyone who knows what that means -- well you know what that means. Enjoy a good laugh.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Eartha -- Chapter 9
Yep. Sorry.
Chapter 9
Each day that passed without a vision Eartha became more tense. Garrick was noticing the change in her behavior and tried to comfort her without making her mad. She didn’t ever seem to really respond to his comfort, but she never once got mad at him for offering it. “Maybe your visions aren’t supposed to happen as often as your dad’s,” he suggested one afternoon at lunch, “I mean you just recently started having visions and maybe you aren’t supposed to have them that often so early.”
“Maybe Dr. Timmus knows what’s going on with my parents,” she replied absentmindedly. She obviously hadn’t heard a word Garrick had said. She had been a million miles away all day and Garrick wasn’t exactly angry that she hadn’t been listening to him. “Well, go talk to him before afternoon classes start,” he suggested.
“Yeah,” she said standing up. He hadn’t really expected her to get up and leave him right at that second. She wandered away still deep in her own thoughts. He shook his head and picked up the remains of her and his own lunch to throw away.
Eartha arrived at Dr. Timmus’ office without remembering walking down there. She entered the waiting room where the secretary merely glanced at Eartha, but didn’t stop whatever it was that she was typing on her computer. “Is Dr. Timmus busy?” Eartha asked the woman quietly.
“I guess I should be used to him telling me who’s coming down before even that person knows, but it still surprises me when students think that Dr. Timmus hasn’t been expecting them,” the woman said more to herself that Eartha, “Go on in. He’s waiting.”
She entered the room as quietly as she could. She actually wondered how Dr. Timmus had known she was coming… she had been blocking him out of her mind all year. She walked up to his desk and he set the book he was reading down on the table and looked over at her. “Have a seat, Eartha,” he offered. She didn’t sit down. She had to know first, “How did you know I was coming?”
He smiled in much the same way Garrick did when he was trying to be sly, “I knew you would point out the fact that you’ve been wasting some of your energy by blocking me out of your mind.”
“Exactly. So how did you know?” she repeated not really in the mood for his cryptic answers.
“Garrick can’t block me so easily. When students talk about me in their conversation it draws my attention to listen to their thoughts,” he explained, “Not that I’d ever use any of the information that I read from students minds against them.”
“Yeah, right,” she replied sarcastically. She finally backed up into one of the chairs across the desk.
“So, you’re wondering about your parents?” he asked.
“A little. Have you heard from either of them?” she responded assuming he had gotten this information from Garrick’s mind as well.
“I have not,” he answered simply, “but when I realized that was what you wanted to know I read their thoughts.”
“You can do that over that much of a distance?” she cut in.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Then why can’t you figure out who’s attacking the psychics?”
“Well, it’s not exactly that easy, Eartha,” he explained, “You see I know your parents and I know where they are. Plus, I know neither of them are blocking me either. It’s very easy to pick up their thoughts. If someone does not want to be found even a telepath is not going to be able to find them.”
“Oh,” was all she managed to reply.
“Your parents, by the way, don’t seem to be having any problems at home,” he reminded her why she had come, “Except they are both a little concerned about you. You were pretty upset when you left them. And the letters you have been sending them aren’t very reassuring to them about your state of mind right now”
“I’m not mad at them,” she said, “I just don’t like the situation I’ve been put in.”
“Have you seen something new that has made you more concerned about your parents?” he asked.
“No. And that’s the whole point. My dad always claimed that bad things always happened if his visions were too quiet for too long. I haven’t had a vision in nearly two weeks and I’m afraid it’s building up into something really bad,” she explained quickly.
“Visions are pretty new to you Eartha. I wouldn’t make generalizations so soon. Just because that’s how they were for your dad doesn’t mean that’s how they’re going to be for you. Maybe for you, not having a lot of visions is actually a good sign,” he offered.
“You sound like Garrick,” she muttered.
“Well, he’s a pretty smart boy. Very logical,” Dr. Timmus smiled, “But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t necessarily right. I mean your type of visions could be exactly like your dad’s and something bad could be coming. The point is we can’t know until something happens. So don’t get yourself upset until there is something to get upset over.” She nodded somewhat reluctantly and was about to leave when she thought of something. “Can you send your thoughts to my parents?” she asked.
“Sure, as long as it’s a pretty simple thought. After all they aren’t telepaths and they can’t decipher thoughts as easily as I do,” Dr. Timmus replied, “Did you need to tell them something?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, “Tell them that I love them and to be careful.”
“I’m sure they know both of those things, but I will tell them so they will know that you’re concerned,” he offered, “Although I could do the same thing with a phone call.”
“Oh,” she replied a little downcast.
“But I will send the message along right now. Telepathic thoughts tend to be a little more personal, don’t you think?” he smiled.
Eartha looked at him and smiled back. Her parents would know that she was concerned immediately. And that she wasn’t still mad at them for sending her back to school. She was about to get up to leave so Dr. Timmus could do whatever it was he needed to do to send her message. He held up his hand to stop her and then said, “Your parents said they loved you too and they are being extremely careful.”
“Wow, it’s that quick?” she asked.
“Your father and I have a very deep link that we’ve had since he was here in school,” he explained. Eartha wondered why, but didn’t feel that it would be appropriate to ask. She nodded and rose to, once again, leave and as she reached the door Dr. Timmus spoke again, “You know, Eartha, even if something were to happen to them you would still have a place here,” He was trying to reassure her and she smiled and nodded politely before leaving, but she knew that knowing that she had a place to stay wouldn’t make her feel any better about losing her parents. She had to rush to get to her first afternoon class, but after her talk with Dr. Timmus she was able to concentrate much easier. Garrick noticed the change immediately at dinner later that night. “You don’t seem as distracted,” he commented.
“I talked to Dr. Timmus at lunch,” she explained.
“I know,” he laughed, “I’m the one who told you to go to him, remember?”
“Yeah,” she replied, “well, he talked to my parents for me”
“What did he tell them?” Garrick asked and immediately wondered if he had once again gotten too nosey.
“Just something that I had forgotten to tell them before I left them,” she replied vaguely. He had asked something a little too personal, but for once she handled the situation calmly. He was also smart enough not to ask her any more questions about that. “So, everything is better now?” he asked instead.
“Well, in one way, I guess,” she replied with a frown, “but I still feel uncomfortable about my parents.”
“What now?” he asked.
“Well, I still think they’re in danger,” she answered, “and from what I’ve heard them and Dr. Timmus say I am even more worried about their safety.”
“What have they said?” he asked.
She hesitated at first, but then replied, “Well, I think they believe what I said to them and that worries me, but then just this afternoon Dr. Timmus told me that if anything did happen to my parents I would still have a place here.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” he replied not quite getting the point.
“Don’t you see?” she asked, “He thinks they are in some kind of danger as well.”
“Maybe he was trying to reassure you that you would not be left alone in a time of need and nothing more,” he offered.
“But in saying that he basically admitted that he also believes them to be in danger,” she replied, “He knows everything. He probably knows if there is a real threat to them even if he doesn’t know exactly what it is.”
“I don’t know,” Garrick replied dismissively, “Maybe he’s only admitting the possibility of something bad happening to your parents. I mean don’t you think if Dr. Timmus really believed your parents to be in danger that he would put them some place safe?”
She sat in silence for a moment and thought about that. Dr. Timmus and her father seemed to be pretty close. If Dr. Timmus knew what was going to happen he would do everything in his power to keep them safe, right? But, Dr. Timmus wasn’t precognitive, she had to remind herself. He wouldn’t know if something bad was going to happen unless someone was thinking about it right next to him. She looked at Garrick. He was always so patient with her and her worries about her parents. She knew he was probably tired of hearing about her problems. He had never actually complained, but she knew she would be annoyed if someone constantly complained about the same things over and over again. So she smiled at him and let her worries go. “That’s true,” she said simply. She wasn’t sure if he really bought her act, but either way she quickly turned the conversation to something that was a little more enjoyable for him.
That night she had problems getting to sleep. When she finally accomplished sleep her dreams would not let it be peaceful. She could hear that woman again… sobbing. Not this again, she thought. She was rushing down a flight of stone stairs. There weren’t any lights yet, but she could feel the smooth cold touch of stone on her bare feet. That’s odd, she paused. She had never felt anything in one of her visions before. She didn’t get much of an opportunity to muse on the realization. The vision was moving her forward down the stairs. She could see a faint light now. The stairs and the sobbing seemed to drone on forever. She held out one arm to see if she could see herself as well as feel. There was nothing there. Like a ghost, she supposed. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs. There was a single candle set on a metal holder that had been mounted to the jagged stone wall. It lit only a small circle around it including the couple on the floor. There was the woman crouched over the man’s lifeless body. Okay, so what am I supposed to see? She asked. She was expecting the vision to stop here like it had before. No, I stopped it before it could show me anything useful. She reminded herself. She moved closer to the couple. Eartha focused on the woman. Who was it? She was so familiar. Her body or spirit or whatever she was in a vision started circling the couple. The man’s face continued to be hidden in the shadows, but the woman’s face was slowly coming into the light. Her hair was streaming around her face and about three quarters of the way down her back. It was raven colored and perfectly straight. The woman was very small and for a moment Eartha thought she had been mistaken in it being a woman and not a girl. She was looking down at the man’s body, which hid her face behind a curtain of hair and shadows. Eartha waited patiently for the woman to be revealed praying that this time she would recognize the woman. You can’t die. Not now. Not after all that we’ve been through. You can’t leave me. Where was that coming from? Eartha wondered. From the woman’s mind? But she wasn’t telepathic… how would she be able to read her thoughts? The woman was tearing at the gloves she was wearing and Eartha suddenly had a nagging feeling that she didn’t want to see what happened next. The woman’s head jerked up suddenly and she looked right at Eartha. Or so it seemed. Eartha was dumbfounded. She was looking at herself about twenty years into the future. The hair, the small body, the voice, it was all so familiar because it was all her own. Eartha jerked back which pulled her violently out of the vision.
Her head was throbbing again and the horrible sensation that she could not breathe came back again. She had pulled away too soon again. She felt sick. Finally air came rushing back into her lungs, but the white-hot pain in her head would not subside. What had that been? She wondered frantically. Had she seen her own fate? And if so, who was the man on the floor? Was she trying to bring him back to life? Could she even do that? She threw the covers off and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Oh, Dad, I really could use your input right about now. She thought as she stood up. She wished she had been able to keep herself in the vision until the end. The shock of seeing herself, though, had been a little too much for Eartha to deal with. She had just seen her future, she realized. And then another realization came to her. That was the first time she had really see the future. All her other visions had been of current events. Things that had been happening as she saw them. She had seen those things, as they happened, not before. She wasn’t precognitive, or at least she hadn’t been before this vision. Her visions weren’t at all like her father’s. He saw things moments before they happened and they were usually unimportant things. He rarely saw big events and when he did they took quite a while to build up in his mind. Her visions were completely different. She was seeing things that were not only happening as she saw them, but they were events that were happening miles away from where she currently was. So, why had she seen her future? And why now? She was only nine years old. What could she possible do with this information now? The event she had seen wouldn’t take place for about twenty years. Was there something she was supposed to be able to do now that would change that future? She was pacing her floor, she noticed. She stopped and looked at herself in the mirror. She was pale and her hair was wild. She must have been tossing in her sleep. At least the headache was beginning to fade. She wondered for a moment if the vision was going to come back and finish itself. If it did come back she would do all she could to stay inside the vision until it was complete. No more blinding headaches or breathlessness for her. It wasn’t worth the pain to try to control the visions. She looked into the mirror again, but her reflection was fading. Eartha felt as though she were falling- no, sinking… like a stone into a bottomless lake. An overwhelming emptiness was consuming her. She felt like she was dying and then she was suddenly snapped back into reality. She felt a sharp pain behind her ribs as though a cord that had been tied to her heart had suddenly snapped. She cried out in pain and the realization sunk in slowly. Her parents were dead.
The connection had broken.
She could no longer feel them.
And even though she had never really noticed the connection there to begin with she could definitely feel its absence. She sank down to her knees in the middle of her room and began to sob uncontrollably. This was too much… why was this all happening to her right now? It was unfair. She quickly slipped into unconsciousness.
“I need to speak to Eartha for a moment,” Dr. Timmus requested quietly. The teacher looked to a darker corner of the room. Eartha was already standing up. She gathered her books and papers into her bag and crossed the room. The other students in the room watched her. She hated the attention this was causing. She slipped from the room into the shadows of the hallway. “What happened?” she whispered.
“We should go to my office,” Dr. Timmus suggested not looking directly at Eartha.
“No. Tell me now. Here. In the hallway. I don’t want to go to your office,” she replied her voice remaining low and steady.
“It’s about your parents and I really think we should go to my office,” he said. Her heart nearly stopped. She knew it. It had happened last night. She had felt the connection to her parents severed. Her parents were gone. She closed her eyes and inhaled sharply, “How did they die?” she asked not moving from her spot in the shadows.
“This is not the place to be discussing this,” Dr. Timmus replied.
“It was him wasn’t it?” she whispered, “The same man who has taken all those others.” Dr. Timmus only nodded not trusting himself to speak. He had been close to her parents. He had helped them though so many difficult decision they faced in their relationship. When they found out that Eartha’s mother was a healer, when they discovered she was pregnant, and the hardest discussion they had made to put Eartha in his care. And now Eartha was entirely in his care. They had known they were in danger from this monster and they wanted to protect their daughter the best they could. And now what was he supposed to do for this girl? Both her parents were dead. The only people who truly understood her troubles were gone forever. They would no longer be there to advise her and Dr. Timmus had nothing to offer. Seeing that it was useless to try to get her to his office Dr. Timmus finally answered, “He trapped them last night. At home, in bed. He killed your father first and your mother tried to save him.”
“She couldn’t,” Eartha replied flatly.
“That’s where you’re wrong. She did manage to bring him back, but it took all her strength to do it. It’s what killed her. Your father managed to wound him before he killed him again,” Dr. Timmus explained, “At least that is the information we have been able to gather from the investigators that are studying the scene. One psychic was able to tell us that your father died twice. We put the pieces together.”
“My mother’s death was in vain,” Eartha said coldly, “That monster didn’t even kill her. She destroyed herself!”
“No—“ But it was too late she had taken off down the hallway and there was nothing Dr. Timmus could say that would make her feel any better. Her parents were dead, and he hadn’t been able to save them. What the hell could he possibly say? She stopped about halfway down the hall, she had something to add, but instead of saying it out loud she spoke through her mind to his, I had another vision last night. She told him.
“You saw your parent’s death?” he asked aloud.
No, I had the vision before I felt the connection from my parents break. They were still alive when I saw… She answered letting her thought trail off.
“Then what did you see?” he asked as a small shiver crept up his spine. The fact that Eartha was not telepathic and still talking to him like this unnerved him. The officials were right to fear her. She had far more power than anyone would ever realize and she was only nine years old.
“My fate,” she stated calmly. She didn’t wait for a response from him. She took off the down the hall again. Another student emerged from behind Dr. Timmus. Dr. Timmus had not realized the boy had been there, but was not surprised to see him. “Go after her. Make sure she’s all right,” he ordered instead of reprimanding him for not being in class. He nodded quickly and took off down the hall after Eartha.
He found her exactly where he thought she would be. The only place she had ever felt at home, the indoor garden. He didn’t speak. What could he have possibly said that would be appropriate at a moment like this? She just found out that her parents had been murdered. What did you say to someone after that? He didn’t know how she felt. He probably never would. He had never been close to either of his parents. His mother had disappeared from his life when he was still a toddler and his father had kept him at a distance since then. His whole life had been focused around this school and the people here. She was alone in the world now. She had made sure no one here could get close to her and now the only people she had ever been remotely close to were dead. He could only try to comfort her, but if she pushed him away again what was he supposed to do?
She was sitting in the grass facing a bush. Her back was to him. He cleared his throat, but she made no movements. She knew he was there, but she chose not to acknowledge him. He stepped up behind her and finally admitted, “Look, I don’t know what I can say to you, but I’m here to listen to you if you want to talk or just to be here for you if you don’t. I’m not gonna leave even if ya tell me to, ‘cause no one should be alone at a time like this.” He expected her to ignore his little speech or to turn against him violently. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she cursed him, but instead she turned to face him. Her cheeks were soaked with tears and her eyes were red. Then she did the most unexpected thing. She stood up, slowly crossed the lawn towards him, and threw herself against him and began to sob. For a moment he didn’t know what to do, but finally he put his arms around her and just held her while she cried.
Nothing was said, nothing resolved. They both just sat back down at the base of the tree. She cried and he held her and they remained that way for hours. She eventually cried herself to sleep and he wasn’t about to chance waking her up by taking her back to the dorms. He made a vow at that moment that he would never let her be alone again. He planned to fill the void her parent’s death had left. He was her friend, the only friend she would allow herself to have and he would not abandon her ever.
He didn’t realize how late it was getting until he heard someone else’s steps approach. Dr. Timmus stood right over them and whispered, “So, she cried herself to sleep, I see.” He bent down and making sure not to disturb her sleep, lifted her off Garrick’s lap. She weighed next to nothing. The only bulk she seemed to have was her clothing. “Do you know what time it is?” Dr. Timmus asked Garrick.
“No,” he replied, “I guess I lost track of time. Is it late?”
“It’s getting there. Its already ten,” Dr. Timmus answered.
“I knew I had missed my last class, but I didn’t realize it was already past dinner time,” Garrick said.
“I can get you something to eat before you go to bed,” Dr. Timmus offered.
“No, I can’t eat,” he frowned.
“Starving yourself won’t help her,” Dr. Timmus reminded him.
“I know,” Garrick replied, “but I feel sick and I think food might make it worse.”
“Suit yourself. You need sleep now. You should get to your own dorm. I’ll put Eartha to bed,” Dr. Timmus ordered.
“Yes, sir,” he replied turning to go to his dorm. He stopped suddenly and added, “Wait a sec. I need to give her something.” He had vowed not to leave her alone, but there was no way he could go to her dorm with her. He pulled out a piece of notebook paper and scribbled a quick note on it. He folded the note several times and handed it to Dr. Timmus. “Can you leave that for her?” he asked. Dr. Timmus nodded and without another word Garrick took off down the hall toward his dorm room.
Chapter 9
Each day that passed without a vision Eartha became more tense. Garrick was noticing the change in her behavior and tried to comfort her without making her mad. She didn’t ever seem to really respond to his comfort, but she never once got mad at him for offering it. “Maybe your visions aren’t supposed to happen as often as your dad’s,” he suggested one afternoon at lunch, “I mean you just recently started having visions and maybe you aren’t supposed to have them that often so early.”
“Maybe Dr. Timmus knows what’s going on with my parents,” she replied absentmindedly. She obviously hadn’t heard a word Garrick had said. She had been a million miles away all day and Garrick wasn’t exactly angry that she hadn’t been listening to him. “Well, go talk to him before afternoon classes start,” he suggested.
“Yeah,” she said standing up. He hadn’t really expected her to get up and leave him right at that second. She wandered away still deep in her own thoughts. He shook his head and picked up the remains of her and his own lunch to throw away.
Eartha arrived at Dr. Timmus’ office without remembering walking down there. She entered the waiting room where the secretary merely glanced at Eartha, but didn’t stop whatever it was that she was typing on her computer. “Is Dr. Timmus busy?” Eartha asked the woman quietly.
“I guess I should be used to him telling me who’s coming down before even that person knows, but it still surprises me when students think that Dr. Timmus hasn’t been expecting them,” the woman said more to herself that Eartha, “Go on in. He’s waiting.”
She entered the room as quietly as she could. She actually wondered how Dr. Timmus had known she was coming… she had been blocking him out of her mind all year. She walked up to his desk and he set the book he was reading down on the table and looked over at her. “Have a seat, Eartha,” he offered. She didn’t sit down. She had to know first, “How did you know I was coming?”
He smiled in much the same way Garrick did when he was trying to be sly, “I knew you would point out the fact that you’ve been wasting some of your energy by blocking me out of your mind.”
“Exactly. So how did you know?” she repeated not really in the mood for his cryptic answers.
“Garrick can’t block me so easily. When students talk about me in their conversation it draws my attention to listen to their thoughts,” he explained, “Not that I’d ever use any of the information that I read from students minds against them.”
“Yeah, right,” she replied sarcastically. She finally backed up into one of the chairs across the desk.
“So, you’re wondering about your parents?” he asked.
“A little. Have you heard from either of them?” she responded assuming he had gotten this information from Garrick’s mind as well.
“I have not,” he answered simply, “but when I realized that was what you wanted to know I read their thoughts.”
“You can do that over that much of a distance?” she cut in.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Then why can’t you figure out who’s attacking the psychics?”
“Well, it’s not exactly that easy, Eartha,” he explained, “You see I know your parents and I know where they are. Plus, I know neither of them are blocking me either. It’s very easy to pick up their thoughts. If someone does not want to be found even a telepath is not going to be able to find them.”
“Oh,” was all she managed to reply.
“Your parents, by the way, don’t seem to be having any problems at home,” he reminded her why she had come, “Except they are both a little concerned about you. You were pretty upset when you left them. And the letters you have been sending them aren’t very reassuring to them about your state of mind right now”
“I’m not mad at them,” she said, “I just don’t like the situation I’ve been put in.”
“Have you seen something new that has made you more concerned about your parents?” he asked.
“No. And that’s the whole point. My dad always claimed that bad things always happened if his visions were too quiet for too long. I haven’t had a vision in nearly two weeks and I’m afraid it’s building up into something really bad,” she explained quickly.
“Visions are pretty new to you Eartha. I wouldn’t make generalizations so soon. Just because that’s how they were for your dad doesn’t mean that’s how they’re going to be for you. Maybe for you, not having a lot of visions is actually a good sign,” he offered.
“You sound like Garrick,” she muttered.
“Well, he’s a pretty smart boy. Very logical,” Dr. Timmus smiled, “But that doesn’t mean that you aren’t necessarily right. I mean your type of visions could be exactly like your dad’s and something bad could be coming. The point is we can’t know until something happens. So don’t get yourself upset until there is something to get upset over.” She nodded somewhat reluctantly and was about to leave when she thought of something. “Can you send your thoughts to my parents?” she asked.
“Sure, as long as it’s a pretty simple thought. After all they aren’t telepaths and they can’t decipher thoughts as easily as I do,” Dr. Timmus replied, “Did you need to tell them something?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, “Tell them that I love them and to be careful.”
“I’m sure they know both of those things, but I will tell them so they will know that you’re concerned,” he offered, “Although I could do the same thing with a phone call.”
“Oh,” she replied a little downcast.
“But I will send the message along right now. Telepathic thoughts tend to be a little more personal, don’t you think?” he smiled.
Eartha looked at him and smiled back. Her parents would know that she was concerned immediately. And that she wasn’t still mad at them for sending her back to school. She was about to get up to leave so Dr. Timmus could do whatever it was he needed to do to send her message. He held up his hand to stop her and then said, “Your parents said they loved you too and they are being extremely careful.”
“Wow, it’s that quick?” she asked.
“Your father and I have a very deep link that we’ve had since he was here in school,” he explained. Eartha wondered why, but didn’t feel that it would be appropriate to ask. She nodded and rose to, once again, leave and as she reached the door Dr. Timmus spoke again, “You know, Eartha, even if something were to happen to them you would still have a place here,” He was trying to reassure her and she smiled and nodded politely before leaving, but she knew that knowing that she had a place to stay wouldn’t make her feel any better about losing her parents. She had to rush to get to her first afternoon class, but after her talk with Dr. Timmus she was able to concentrate much easier. Garrick noticed the change immediately at dinner later that night. “You don’t seem as distracted,” he commented.
“I talked to Dr. Timmus at lunch,” she explained.
“I know,” he laughed, “I’m the one who told you to go to him, remember?”
“Yeah,” she replied, “well, he talked to my parents for me”
“What did he tell them?” Garrick asked and immediately wondered if he had once again gotten too nosey.
“Just something that I had forgotten to tell them before I left them,” she replied vaguely. He had asked something a little too personal, but for once she handled the situation calmly. He was also smart enough not to ask her any more questions about that. “So, everything is better now?” he asked instead.
“Well, in one way, I guess,” she replied with a frown, “but I still feel uncomfortable about my parents.”
“What now?” he asked.
“Well, I still think they’re in danger,” she answered, “and from what I’ve heard them and Dr. Timmus say I am even more worried about their safety.”
“What have they said?” he asked.
She hesitated at first, but then replied, “Well, I think they believe what I said to them and that worries me, but then just this afternoon Dr. Timmus told me that if anything did happen to my parents I would still have a place here.”
“Well, that’s a good thing,” he replied not quite getting the point.
“Don’t you see?” she asked, “He thinks they are in some kind of danger as well.”
“Maybe he was trying to reassure you that you would not be left alone in a time of need and nothing more,” he offered.
“But in saying that he basically admitted that he also believes them to be in danger,” she replied, “He knows everything. He probably knows if there is a real threat to them even if he doesn’t know exactly what it is.”
“I don’t know,” Garrick replied dismissively, “Maybe he’s only admitting the possibility of something bad happening to your parents. I mean don’t you think if Dr. Timmus really believed your parents to be in danger that he would put them some place safe?”
She sat in silence for a moment and thought about that. Dr. Timmus and her father seemed to be pretty close. If Dr. Timmus knew what was going to happen he would do everything in his power to keep them safe, right? But, Dr. Timmus wasn’t precognitive, she had to remind herself. He wouldn’t know if something bad was going to happen unless someone was thinking about it right next to him. She looked at Garrick. He was always so patient with her and her worries about her parents. She knew he was probably tired of hearing about her problems. He had never actually complained, but she knew she would be annoyed if someone constantly complained about the same things over and over again. So she smiled at him and let her worries go. “That’s true,” she said simply. She wasn’t sure if he really bought her act, but either way she quickly turned the conversation to something that was a little more enjoyable for him.
That night she had problems getting to sleep. When she finally accomplished sleep her dreams would not let it be peaceful. She could hear that woman again… sobbing. Not this again, she thought. She was rushing down a flight of stone stairs. There weren’t any lights yet, but she could feel the smooth cold touch of stone on her bare feet. That’s odd, she paused. She had never felt anything in one of her visions before. She didn’t get much of an opportunity to muse on the realization. The vision was moving her forward down the stairs. She could see a faint light now. The stairs and the sobbing seemed to drone on forever. She held out one arm to see if she could see herself as well as feel. There was nothing there. Like a ghost, she supposed. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs. There was a single candle set on a metal holder that had been mounted to the jagged stone wall. It lit only a small circle around it including the couple on the floor. There was the woman crouched over the man’s lifeless body. Okay, so what am I supposed to see? She asked. She was expecting the vision to stop here like it had before. No, I stopped it before it could show me anything useful. She reminded herself. She moved closer to the couple. Eartha focused on the woman. Who was it? She was so familiar. Her body or spirit or whatever she was in a vision started circling the couple. The man’s face continued to be hidden in the shadows, but the woman’s face was slowly coming into the light. Her hair was streaming around her face and about three quarters of the way down her back. It was raven colored and perfectly straight. The woman was very small and for a moment Eartha thought she had been mistaken in it being a woman and not a girl. She was looking down at the man’s body, which hid her face behind a curtain of hair and shadows. Eartha waited patiently for the woman to be revealed praying that this time she would recognize the woman. You can’t die. Not now. Not after all that we’ve been through. You can’t leave me. Where was that coming from? Eartha wondered. From the woman’s mind? But she wasn’t telepathic… how would she be able to read her thoughts? The woman was tearing at the gloves she was wearing and Eartha suddenly had a nagging feeling that she didn’t want to see what happened next. The woman’s head jerked up suddenly and she looked right at Eartha. Or so it seemed. Eartha was dumbfounded. She was looking at herself about twenty years into the future. The hair, the small body, the voice, it was all so familiar because it was all her own. Eartha jerked back which pulled her violently out of the vision.
Her head was throbbing again and the horrible sensation that she could not breathe came back again. She had pulled away too soon again. She felt sick. Finally air came rushing back into her lungs, but the white-hot pain in her head would not subside. What had that been? She wondered frantically. Had she seen her own fate? And if so, who was the man on the floor? Was she trying to bring him back to life? Could she even do that? She threw the covers off and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Oh, Dad, I really could use your input right about now. She thought as she stood up. She wished she had been able to keep herself in the vision until the end. The shock of seeing herself, though, had been a little too much for Eartha to deal with. She had just seen her future, she realized. And then another realization came to her. That was the first time she had really see the future. All her other visions had been of current events. Things that had been happening as she saw them. She had seen those things, as they happened, not before. She wasn’t precognitive, or at least she hadn’t been before this vision. Her visions weren’t at all like her father’s. He saw things moments before they happened and they were usually unimportant things. He rarely saw big events and when he did they took quite a while to build up in his mind. Her visions were completely different. She was seeing things that were not only happening as she saw them, but they were events that were happening miles away from where she currently was. So, why had she seen her future? And why now? She was only nine years old. What could she possible do with this information now? The event she had seen wouldn’t take place for about twenty years. Was there something she was supposed to be able to do now that would change that future? She was pacing her floor, she noticed. She stopped and looked at herself in the mirror. She was pale and her hair was wild. She must have been tossing in her sleep. At least the headache was beginning to fade. She wondered for a moment if the vision was going to come back and finish itself. If it did come back she would do all she could to stay inside the vision until it was complete. No more blinding headaches or breathlessness for her. It wasn’t worth the pain to try to control the visions. She looked into the mirror again, but her reflection was fading. Eartha felt as though she were falling- no, sinking… like a stone into a bottomless lake. An overwhelming emptiness was consuming her. She felt like she was dying and then she was suddenly snapped back into reality. She felt a sharp pain behind her ribs as though a cord that had been tied to her heart had suddenly snapped. She cried out in pain and the realization sunk in slowly. Her parents were dead.
The connection had broken.
She could no longer feel them.
And even though she had never really noticed the connection there to begin with she could definitely feel its absence. She sank down to her knees in the middle of her room and began to sob uncontrollably. This was too much… why was this all happening to her right now? It was unfair. She quickly slipped into unconsciousness.
“I need to speak to Eartha for a moment,” Dr. Timmus requested quietly. The teacher looked to a darker corner of the room. Eartha was already standing up. She gathered her books and papers into her bag and crossed the room. The other students in the room watched her. She hated the attention this was causing. She slipped from the room into the shadows of the hallway. “What happened?” she whispered.
“We should go to my office,” Dr. Timmus suggested not looking directly at Eartha.
“No. Tell me now. Here. In the hallway. I don’t want to go to your office,” she replied her voice remaining low and steady.
“It’s about your parents and I really think we should go to my office,” he said. Her heart nearly stopped. She knew it. It had happened last night. She had felt the connection to her parents severed. Her parents were gone. She closed her eyes and inhaled sharply, “How did they die?” she asked not moving from her spot in the shadows.
“This is not the place to be discussing this,” Dr. Timmus replied.
“It was him wasn’t it?” she whispered, “The same man who has taken all those others.” Dr. Timmus only nodded not trusting himself to speak. He had been close to her parents. He had helped them though so many difficult decision they faced in their relationship. When they found out that Eartha’s mother was a healer, when they discovered she was pregnant, and the hardest discussion they had made to put Eartha in his care. And now Eartha was entirely in his care. They had known they were in danger from this monster and they wanted to protect their daughter the best they could. And now what was he supposed to do for this girl? Both her parents were dead. The only people who truly understood her troubles were gone forever. They would no longer be there to advise her and Dr. Timmus had nothing to offer. Seeing that it was useless to try to get her to his office Dr. Timmus finally answered, “He trapped them last night. At home, in bed. He killed your father first and your mother tried to save him.”
“She couldn’t,” Eartha replied flatly.
“That’s where you’re wrong. She did manage to bring him back, but it took all her strength to do it. It’s what killed her. Your father managed to wound him before he killed him again,” Dr. Timmus explained, “At least that is the information we have been able to gather from the investigators that are studying the scene. One psychic was able to tell us that your father died twice. We put the pieces together.”
“My mother’s death was in vain,” Eartha said coldly, “That monster didn’t even kill her. She destroyed herself!”
“No—“ But it was too late she had taken off down the hallway and there was nothing Dr. Timmus could say that would make her feel any better. Her parents were dead, and he hadn’t been able to save them. What the hell could he possibly say? She stopped about halfway down the hall, she had something to add, but instead of saying it out loud she spoke through her mind to his, I had another vision last night. She told him.
“You saw your parent’s death?” he asked aloud.
No, I had the vision before I felt the connection from my parents break. They were still alive when I saw… She answered letting her thought trail off.
“Then what did you see?” he asked as a small shiver crept up his spine. The fact that Eartha was not telepathic and still talking to him like this unnerved him. The officials were right to fear her. She had far more power than anyone would ever realize and she was only nine years old.
“My fate,” she stated calmly. She didn’t wait for a response from him. She took off the down the hall again. Another student emerged from behind Dr. Timmus. Dr. Timmus had not realized the boy had been there, but was not surprised to see him. “Go after her. Make sure she’s all right,” he ordered instead of reprimanding him for not being in class. He nodded quickly and took off down the hall after Eartha.
He found her exactly where he thought she would be. The only place she had ever felt at home, the indoor garden. He didn’t speak. What could he have possibly said that would be appropriate at a moment like this? She just found out that her parents had been murdered. What did you say to someone after that? He didn’t know how she felt. He probably never would. He had never been close to either of his parents. His mother had disappeared from his life when he was still a toddler and his father had kept him at a distance since then. His whole life had been focused around this school and the people here. She was alone in the world now. She had made sure no one here could get close to her and now the only people she had ever been remotely close to were dead. He could only try to comfort her, but if she pushed him away again what was he supposed to do?
She was sitting in the grass facing a bush. Her back was to him. He cleared his throat, but she made no movements. She knew he was there, but she chose not to acknowledge him. He stepped up behind her and finally admitted, “Look, I don’t know what I can say to you, but I’m here to listen to you if you want to talk or just to be here for you if you don’t. I’m not gonna leave even if ya tell me to, ‘cause no one should be alone at a time like this.” He expected her to ignore his little speech or to turn against him violently. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she cursed him, but instead she turned to face him. Her cheeks were soaked with tears and her eyes were red. Then she did the most unexpected thing. She stood up, slowly crossed the lawn towards him, and threw herself against him and began to sob. For a moment he didn’t know what to do, but finally he put his arms around her and just held her while she cried.
Nothing was said, nothing resolved. They both just sat back down at the base of the tree. She cried and he held her and they remained that way for hours. She eventually cried herself to sleep and he wasn’t about to chance waking her up by taking her back to the dorms. He made a vow at that moment that he would never let her be alone again. He planned to fill the void her parent’s death had left. He was her friend, the only friend she would allow herself to have and he would not abandon her ever.
He didn’t realize how late it was getting until he heard someone else’s steps approach. Dr. Timmus stood right over them and whispered, “So, she cried herself to sleep, I see.” He bent down and making sure not to disturb her sleep, lifted her off Garrick’s lap. She weighed next to nothing. The only bulk she seemed to have was her clothing. “Do you know what time it is?” Dr. Timmus asked Garrick.
“No,” he replied, “I guess I lost track of time. Is it late?”
“It’s getting there. Its already ten,” Dr. Timmus answered.
“I knew I had missed my last class, but I didn’t realize it was already past dinner time,” Garrick said.
“I can get you something to eat before you go to bed,” Dr. Timmus offered.
“No, I can’t eat,” he frowned.
“Starving yourself won’t help her,” Dr. Timmus reminded him.
“I know,” Garrick replied, “but I feel sick and I think food might make it worse.”
“Suit yourself. You need sleep now. You should get to your own dorm. I’ll put Eartha to bed,” Dr. Timmus ordered.
“Yes, sir,” he replied turning to go to his dorm. He stopped suddenly and added, “Wait a sec. I need to give her something.” He had vowed not to leave her alone, but there was no way he could go to her dorm with her. He pulled out a piece of notebook paper and scribbled a quick note on it. He folded the note several times and handed it to Dr. Timmus. “Can you leave that for her?” he asked. Dr. Timmus nodded and without another word Garrick took off down the hall toward his dorm room.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
Friday the 13th on Tuesday the 8th
Apparently Tuesday the Eight is a disguise for Friday the Thirteenth. Bad luck. Bad day. Bad everything. This day should be wiped off the calender like it never existed. Sorry for those of you born on this day, I will no longer be observing it.
Of course it's a Tuesday. Only on Tuesdays does this kind of crap happen. I start my fine morning off by tripping over the drawer that I left open. Totally my fault and I totally deserve it.... and if my blindingly white skin didn't keep washing out the pictures I'd show you all what my temporary retardation left on my shin. And of course on of our patient's fantastic husbands decides to quip, "Watch out there!" a full minute after the damage has been done. Thanks Slow Mo! You're so helpful! Gee, what would I do without you?
The day went on with out typical Tuesday patients. All the three-thirty patients showing up fifteen minutes late and all the four o'clock patients showing up fifteen minutes early making the finest cluster f*ck you can possibly imagine right in the middle of our fine afternoon. Standard stuff that only possesses mild irritation.
Day's over and I'm heading out the door. Check my voice mail and return a call to my dad. Your Great Aunt Mert is dead and the funeral is tomorrow. Perfect. Just what I needed on this already fantastic Tuesday evening. So, I tell my dad I'll be there and pull into the gas station. My car is gasping for fuel at this point. And wonder of all wonders they are out of the cheepy gas and I have to waste an extra 10 cents a gallon. Something I barely register after my dad's phone call, but pisses me off now.
I get home and my parking spot is filled. Annoying, but not unusual since I share the spot. I park in the spot that's not really a spot even though there are plenty of real spots open because I really am that lazy and the fake spot is about a foot closer to my front door. At some point I decided I no longer like Apple and decide to drop my iPod in the parking lot. By the time I realize this my $250 rectangle is long gone. Thank you universe for screwing me over on this really great day.
Is it any wonder I chose to cut this day out of my life?
Of course it's a Tuesday. Only on Tuesdays does this kind of crap happen. I start my fine morning off by tripping over the drawer that I left open. Totally my fault and I totally deserve it.... and if my blindingly white skin didn't keep washing out the pictures I'd show you all what my temporary retardation left on my shin. And of course on of our patient's fantastic husbands decides to quip, "Watch out there!" a full minute after the damage has been done. Thanks Slow Mo! You're so helpful! Gee, what would I do without you?
The day went on with out typical Tuesday patients. All the three-thirty patients showing up fifteen minutes late and all the four o'clock patients showing up fifteen minutes early making the finest cluster f*ck you can possibly imagine right in the middle of our fine afternoon. Standard stuff that only possesses mild irritation.
Day's over and I'm heading out the door. Check my voice mail and return a call to my dad. Your Great Aunt Mert is dead and the funeral is tomorrow. Perfect. Just what I needed on this already fantastic Tuesday evening. So, I tell my dad I'll be there and pull into the gas station. My car is gasping for fuel at this point. And wonder of all wonders they are out of the cheepy gas and I have to waste an extra 10 cents a gallon. Something I barely register after my dad's phone call, but pisses me off now.
I get home and my parking spot is filled. Annoying, but not unusual since I share the spot. I park in the spot that's not really a spot even though there are plenty of real spots open because I really am that lazy and the fake spot is about a foot closer to my front door. At some point I decided I no longer like Apple and decide to drop my iPod in the parking lot. By the time I realize this my $250 rectangle is long gone. Thank you universe for screwing me over on this really great day.
Is it any wonder I chose to cut this day out of my life?
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Eartha -- Chapter 8
A new month, a new year, a new chapter, and a new attitude.... kind of. Thank you again to the real Garrick Strom who googled his name and found my story. That comment made me smile and randomly start humming "It's a Small World After All". I've had some other positive feedback from people who don't read the blog, but have read the new version of this story so that inspires me to continue. As for all my nay sayers, bring it on. You inspire me as well -- mostly in creating new evil characters that I can kill off, but hey, we all have our place in this world. And if some of you still feel the need to hide behind annoymous comments so be it. I can just delete you :) So, here I bring Chapter 8 another building block to a much bigger chapter. In my updated version of the story I hope to get the exciting stuff sooner, but until then enjoy.
Chapter 8
September first rolled up and no one in the Wicken family was very happy on the drive back to the subway station. Roger had not said a word to Mora or Eartha about his visions or about the conversation he had with Dr. Timmus. Eartha was still upset about her parents not believing that they were in danger and Mora didn’t have the heart to tell her daughter the truth. The subway station was packed with early morning commuters and unless one was really looking for it no one would notice the children spread out in the crowd carrying unusually large amounts of luggage. Eartha stood silently between her parents refusing to look at either of them. She couldn’t believe they were sending her back after what she had told them. Why didn’t adults ever listen to their children? She wondered.
“Okay, sweetie, it’s gonna be here any second now,” Mora said softly, “I know you’re still upset with us because you think we don’t believe you, but that’s not the reason that you have to go back to school.”
“If there is a danger out there we want you in the safest place we can put you,” Roger chimed in.
“What makes you think the school is the safest place for me?” Eartha asked.
“Well, they know for sure that there are plenty of psychics there and they haven’t attacked anyone there yet, so I’m assuming there is a reason for that,” Roger explained.
“They’ve already broken in once. What makes you think they wont do it again?” Eartha commented.
“They only took files that time,” Roger reminded her, “There is a lot of protection that Dr. Timmus has added to the school since then. I think they haven’t been able to get back in since then or they’re afraid to.”
“And you’re just going to leave yourself out in the open to be attacked?” Eartha asked.
“We’re not going to be attacked,” Mora insisted.
“We are protecting ourselves, Eartha. We will do our best to make sure nothing happens to either of us,” Roger tried to be reassuring.
“So, in other words, you don’t think you’re going to be attacked and you’re sending me back to school because you don’t believe there’s any reason to keep me at home,” Eartha shot back.
“First of all, there is no reason that you should be kept at home, regardless of whether we are in danger or not,” Roger said somewhat harshly, “Do you think I would keep you somewhere where I thought you would be in danger?” Eartha didn’t get a chance to respond because at that moment the subway pulled into the station. She only had time to give them hugs and kisses goodbye before the subway would take off again. She piled on with everyone else and quickly found a seat in the corner. She was one of the few people to actually obtain a seat and it was largely due to her small size. She looked around vainly for a familiar face, but all she saw was adult legs and torsos. She actually could have used the company of Garrick right about now. She really would have loved to get some of the anger and frustrations she had right now off her chest. She looked up and noticed that the people around her had slowly moved away from her and a few of them were actually glancing over in her direction. She realized quickly that her emotions were starting to lash out at others. She was out of practice with guarding herself. So for the rest of the ride to the school she focused on building her protective shield around herself again. She was so focused on building her shield back up that she almost missed her stop all together. She stood on the platform with a few other kids. Most of the students would be coming throughout the day. There had been schedules sent out to students a few weeks ago so it wouldn’t look so suspicious when an unusual amount of children got off on the same platform. Unfortunately, the fact that the platform was pretty much in the middle of nowhere made anyone getting off looking a little suspicious. The students kind of milled around the platform aimlessly until the subway was completely out of sight. Slowly the kids started disappearing out the door and back to school. Eartha was the last to go through the doorway. She purposely put some distance between her and the other students. She took her time getting to the main hall and then braced herself for all the kids that were bound to be hanging around the main entrance hall.
She stepped into another world the moment she stepped through the front door. The main hall was very bright and loud with student greeting the friends after a long summer. Eartha glanced around the room and felt a sinking sensation flow through her body. She wondered what it would be like to rush up to a group of friends and give them all a huge group hug. How would it be to get close to people? She sighed and moved her things towards the dorms. “Miss me?” Garrick’s lazy nonchalant voice asked from behind. She pretended not to hear him and continued to walk towards the dorms.
“Oh, my God!” he yelled out suddenly, “She’s gone deaf over summer vacation! What am I going to do now? How can I annoy her when she can’t hear me?” She spun around with an evil smile on her face. “I can hear you just fine,” she announced, “I just figured if I didn’t respond you would go away.”
“You look brown,” he commented suddenly ignoring her comment.
“And you look as pasty as ever,” she retorted.
“Gee, I missed your attitude,” he grinned pulling one of her bags out of her hands to help her out.
“It’s good to see you too,” she admitted in return. He jerked to a stop and threw one hand to his chest in false dramatics. He pretended to faint and said, “A nice comment from Eartha. The shock will kill me!”
“Are you done now?” she asked in a bored voice.
“Yeah, I think that’s good,” he said righting himself and continued to walk down the hall with her bag. She laughed and followed him. They dropped her bags on the floor and left them there.
“So, how was your summer?” he asked once they were back out in the hallway.
“It could have been worse. It could have been better,” she replied.
“You have the most unique way of saying a lot without saying a damn thing,” he laughed, “Could you be any more vague?”
“I’m sure I could if I tried a little harder,” she answered.
“So what did you do this summer? Or am I not allowed to know?” he asked.
“My parents rented out a beach house for the summer,” she said, “I was swimming most of the summer.”
“That would explain the brownness,” he chuckled.
“And I’m assuming you followed through with your skiing plans which would explain your pastiness?” she asked.
“You assumed correctly,” he nodded, “So why wasn’t your vacation fun?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t fun,” she answered.
“But you did say it could have been better,” he shot back.
“And I still think that it could,” she said.
“What could have made it better?” he asked.
She shook her head at his relentlessness, “A pony,” she replied sarcastically making him throw his head back and laugh. “Well, it wasn’t so much the vacation that gave me a negative opinion so much as the vacation being over. I still think my parents are a target, but they don’t seem to be taking the threat too seriously. They sent me back here and it’s like I’m pretty much just waiting for the news that they were murdered.” She finally answered truthfully.
“That’s pretty morbid,” Garrick answered quietly.
“I know, but I can feel something horrible coming,” she replied.
“Maybe it’s not what you think,” he offered.
“And maybe it is,” she replied, “but no one will know for sure until it happens and I would rather be around my parents right now.”
“Well then I can see why your parents would send you here,” he said.
“What! Why?” she asked surprised and angry. He was supposed to be on her side.
“If they think they are a target they wouldn’t want to put you in danger too, right?” he explained.
“They don’t believe me!” she cried out, “And if they do they have a very funny way of showing it.”
“I’m sure they took what you said very seriously and they put you in the safest place they could think of. What if these people got a hold of you and started to use your power for their little mission?” Garrick explained. That shut her up immediately. She had been very selfish about wanting to stay with her parents. If what Garrick said was true then her parents had sent her back selflessly and here she was making them feel bad about sending her away. She shook her head and grunted in frustration. “I don’t want to talk about this right now,” she announced.
He scoffed and then asked, “Okay, so what would you like to talk about?”
She looked around and noticed that they had unintentionally come to the indoor garden. The door was unlocked and the lights were on inside. She was surprised even though she couldn’t remember a time when the garden was not open. She went inside and felt instantly at home and much calmer than she had been just moments before. “Well?” Garrick prompted her.
“Well, what?” she replied in a much lighter tone.
“What would you like to talk about?” he repeated. She had leaned over to smell one of the flowers and he knew that she was in another world right now so he didn’t press her to answer him. She drifted off further into the garden and he reluctantly followed her. She was already disappearing behind another corner and he quickened his pace to keep track of where she was going. He rounded the corner after her, but once again she was gone. He took off at a jog to find her and he could hear her laughing pretty far off. She was playing games now. He didn’t know whether to be annoyed or happy that she was no longer in a foul mood. He broke into a run determined to find her now. He saw a flash of her skirt as it disappeared around another tree. He followed it, but then he could hear her laughing from the other side. He stopped out of breath and confused. “Come on, now, you can’t give up so easily,” she called to him. He followed the sound of her voice and took off in that direction. “I will find you if it takes me all night!” he called out.
“I don’t think so,” he heard her voice behind him. He spun around and looked around to see where she had gone. Then he felt her gloved hands covering his eyes from behind. He gasped and spun around. She was standing before him with a huge grin on her face. “How did you do that?” he asked.
“It’s a secret,” she whispered. She stepped back and studied him for a moment and said. “I just noticed how much taller you got over the summer,” she commented suddenly once again quickly changing the subject.
“Yes, and you’ve remained your same old stunted self,” he replied.
“I think I’ll always be pretty small,” she said, “but since I have all these layers I’m not too concerned about it.”
Another person had entered the room she realized. Garrick still seemed to be unaware, but he noticed Eartha tense up and realized something was up. They both looked towards the door and saw Dr. Timmus standing just inside the door. “Ah, I knew I could find you both here,” he announced quietly, “Sorry to interrupt the reunion, but I need to ask you to go to the cafeteria with the rest of the students. There are some important notices that you should probably hear and you’ll probably want to eat before you go back to the dorms for the night.” Garrick quickly nodded and led the way back out of the room. Eartha paused for a moment and then followed him. Dr. Timmus slowed her down by tugging gently on her sleeve. “How have things been at home?” he asked.
“It could be better,” she replied.
Dr. Timmus nodded thoughtfully for a moment and then motioned her forward. Eartha knew that Dr. Timmus knew about everything that had been going on at her home, but he was choosing to remain silent. “No pearls of wisdom today?” she commented dryly.
“I think this is one family issue that I cannot help with,” he replied, “The only thing I have to say is that you all need to trust what the other is doing or trying to do.”
“I really don’t like your cryptic advice,” Eartha said pulling away from him and chasing after Garrick to catch up. She didn’t really want to know what Dr. Timmus had to say about her family problems.
“Hey, what was that all about?” Garrick asked as she finally caught up to him at the door of the dinning hall.
“Nothing,” she replied giving him a look that said don’t press me and he didn’t. She slumped down into a chair. This year wasn’t shaping up to be a very good one yet. The feeling that her parents were in danger was increasing and she knew that it was not just paranoia. Even Garrick had suggested that her parents knew what danger they were in and that really didn’t make her feel better. If they did believe her and they had sent her back to school for safety purposes then they felt they were in danger too. The tone in Dr. Timmus’ voice made her believe that the school year was just going to get worse from here on out. She was grinding her teeth and Garrick was giving her a strange look when she finally realized that she had completely spaced out for the past five minutes. She looked down at her food and pushed it away. She definitely was not in the mood for food. Garrick pushed her plate back in front of her. “You need to eat whether you’re in a bad mood or not,” he insisted. She sighed heavily and reluctantly took up her fork again. She knew Garrick was only looking out for her best interests, but if he had any idea what was going through her mind right now he would leave her the hell alone.
Classes started the next morning like clockwork and Eartha was actually glad to have something to focus her mind on other than her parents. She focused entirely on what her teachers were telling her. Even in her boring history class she was listening to everything that Mr. Sayers was saying. He was her least favorite teacher and it wasn’t exactly easy to willingly pay attention to him. So, when everything began to fade away she didn’t really notice at first. Her ears began to ring and when sound finally came back she wasn’t hearing what Mr. Sayers was saying. She could only hear someone sobbing. She couldn’t see anything yet, but then a light was slowly brightening the scene. She saw a woman kneeling on the ground with her back to Eartha. The woman was dressed in all black and was leaning over something. Eartha tried to get a better look, but she was frozen where she was. The woman was still sobbing, but she leaned back slightly to reveal another body on the floor. Eartha screamed and the vision faded immediately.
Mr. Sayers’ classroom reappeared instantly. She leapt out of her chair realizing everyone was staring at her. She grabbed her bag and ran from the room completely embarrassed. She took off down the hall in the direction of her dorm room. She couldn’t believe it was happening to her in the middle of the afternoon now. Wasn’t there a way for her to control this at all? And why was she getting all these horrible images of people dying? She slowed her pace slightly. She was getting a headache. Her eyes seemed to be burning so she clamped them shut, but this turned out to be a bad idea. She could hear the woman sobbing again. The vision was trying to come to her again. NO! She told herself not realizing that she said it aloud. She forced her eyes open again and a white-hot pain sliced through her brain. She felt like she couldn’t breathe anymore and she dropped to her knees. She placed her hands on the sides of her temples and moaned. “Eartha! What are you doing?” a voice asked from above and for one delirious moment she thought it was God. Someone was picking her up off the floor and carrying her away. She was still clutching the side of her head. Her breathing returned to normal and the pain began to subside, but she kept her hands where they were. She didn’t want to chance the vision trying to come back again. She looked up at who was carrying her and immediately recognized Dr. Timmus.
“You can’t will visions away,” he said to her.
“Why can’t I control them?” she moaned.
He smiled sadly, “If I could answer that the whole world would run quite a bit smoother.”
They were entering a room she did not at first recognize. Then she recognized the surroundings immediately. She was in the hospital wing. “I’m fine,” Eartha insisted, “I don’t need to be here.”
“She will be able to give you something that will relax you and reduce the chance of you having the vision. If you keep fighting the visions you will likely have a seizure,” Dr. Timmus explained, “After she gives you something, you can go back to your dorm to get some sleep.” He set Eartha down on one of the many empty beds and left. Eartha looked around, but saw no one. Normally she felt safer when she was alone, but the silence was actually making her uncomfortable. She shifted to look around the room. If no one was going to come she was going back to her room. She swung her legs off the bed and was about to stand up when the door finally creaked open at the far end of the room. The nurse entered the room. “Might as well swing those legs back up on the bed,” she said brusquely, “It will take a moment to fix up what Dr. Timmus wants me to give you. And if the vision starts to come back before I’m done just let it come. I don’t need you having a seizure on me.” She walked to the cabinets in the corner and unlocked the doors. Inside Eartha could see a number of jars full of mysterious liquids. Eartha watched her mix a few of the liquids together and then surprised herself by saying, “I understand that people can’t will visions to come to them, but I don’t understand why I can’t stop them from coming at any hour of the day.”
“I guess it’s much like any psychic ability,” the nurse replied in a much nicer tone than she had earlier, reminding Eartha that she liked the nurse from the last time she helped her, “If we could control our powers we could rule the world.” She laughed and looked over her shoulder at Eartha who wasn’t smiling. “I’m surprised that you, of all people, would think there was a way of controlling something like this.”
“I can heal just about anything,” Eartha commented, “But I couldn’t heal the pain that comes with the visions.”
“I haven’t met a person yet who can,” the nurse replied, “But I must emphasize the more you fight them, the more painful they will become.” She had finished with her concoction at this point and brought it over to Eartha. It was maybe a tablespoon of a dark green liquid in a small vial. Eartha wasn’t so sure about the liquid, but was more afraid that the nurse would force it down her throat if she refused. She gulped the liquid quickly hoping it didn’t have much of an aftertaste. It burned her throat as it flowed down to her stomach, but it didn’t seem to have a taste at all. “Okay, that should take a couple of minutes to take effect. It should be enough time for you to hurry back to your dorm room. You’ll know when it hits you,” the woman smiled which made Eartha even more uncomfortable, but she just nodded and rushed out of the room. Apparently no one really cared about the last few classes she was going to be missing.
She locked herself in her room and before she had a chance to turn her light on or take her boots off the whole room seemed to tilt forward. She gasped at the sudden attack at her equilibrium. As she walked forward to her bed the floor seemed to tilt with each step, but she managed to make it without falling. The world spun and twisted around her and then a heavy dreamless sleep fell over her. The mixture the nurse had given her was strong and lasted through the night and up to the next morning. Eartha woke from the noise of the other students getting ready for their classes. This was rare since Eartha was normally up and out of the dorm by the time the others were waking up. She rushed to get ready for breakfast. She had missed dinner the night before and was unusually hungry. She left the dorm without saying a word to anyone and no one seemed to notice. She really didn’t like the rushed feeling. The hallway was pretty empty, thankfully. There was only one student at the far end and he seemed to be coming back towards the dorms. “Hey!” the kid called out to her. She narrowed her eyes to see who was hailing her. Who else? It was Garrick.
“Hi,” she said unenthusiastically. She felt completely out of whack. All she wanted to do was fall back into the shadows and feel normal again.
“You weren’t around last night and I’ve heard some rather odd versions of what happened to you,” he inquired. He was trying to play casual, but obviously one of the outlandish rumors had gotten him concerned. She tried to muster a smile and she waved off his concerns, “It was another vision,” she said casually, “It came in Mr. Sayers class and I tried to stop it. Apparently that’s not a good idea.”
“What happened?” he asked. Her casualness wasn’t easing his mind.
“Nothing. I went to the nurse and she gave me something to sleep without dreams,” she explained cutting out the part where she felt like she was going to die when she couldn’t breathe and the part where Dr. Timmus had to carry her to the nurse.
“That’s all?” he asked unbelieving.
“Yep, except I overslept because of whatever it was that she gave me,” Eartha tried to reassure him, “I feel kind of out of it right now.”
“You look kind of out of it,” he agreed. The walked together towards the dinning hall. She mused over his concern. It wasn’t that it was all that unusual for him to be concerned about her. She knew he cared a great deal for her. It was that he had believed whatever rumors he had heard about what had happened. It was quite uncharacteristic for him. He usually didn’t believe anything that he didn’t see with his own two eyes. She laughed suddenly and caught him off guard. “What on earth did you hear about me that got you so concerned?” Garrick suddenly turned bright red and looked away.
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way,” he said quickly.
“What way?” she asked.
“It wasn’t that I was worried or anything. I was just wondering where you were, that’s all,” he replied.
“I didn’t say you were worried. I asked why you were so concerned,” she corrected him.
“Yeah, I was concerned,” he said defensively, “You’re my friend and I thought something bad might have happened to you… or your parents.” He added that last part under his breath.
“What about my parents?” she asked.
“Well, one of the rumors that was flying around was that you had a vision about your parents being killed and that you jumped up out of you seat and ran out of Mr. Sayers class,” he explained, “You know I’m not one for believing rumors, but with as worried as you’ve been about your parents I thought there might actually be some truth to it this time.”
“It wasn’t about my parents,” she assured him, “I don’t know who they were. I tried to stop the vision and it gave me a really horrible headache. So, I couldn’t really see what the people looked like. The woman seemed really familiar, but it wasn’t my mother.”
“What happened in your vision?” he asked timidly afraid she would snap at him.
“It was a woman crying over the body of a man. I couldn’t see either of their faces and I tried to stop the vision,” she said simply, “I don’t want to know about any more deaths.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” he agreed, “Were you able to stop it?”
“Kind of,” she said, “temporarily, but it tried to come back again and I tried to stop it again, but it hurt. Dr. Timmus told me that if I kept trying to stop them I would probably have a seizure.”
“When did Dr. Timmus come into the picture?” he asked. Oh, damn! She should have stopped talking a long time ago. She realized.
“He saw me in the hallway after I left Mr. Sayers classroom,” she explained really wishing she hadn’t gotten into this conversation with him.
“Hmm,” Garrick replied scrunching up his face.
“What?” she asked not really wanting to know what he was thinking but knowing that he was going to tell her anyway.
“Well, I was just wondering what Dr. Timmus was doing walking through the halls. I mean, he’s a pretty busy man and he’s not the type of person to take a leisure walk through the hallways. Do you think he knew something was going to happen?” he asked.
“I don’t know, maybe. Or maybe he was reading my thoughts and felt the need to see exactly what was up,” she replied trying to dismiss this subject. Garrick wasn’t so willing to let it die. “Does he normally come to your aid when you have visions?”
“No, but I usually don’t try to stop them either. Can we please drop this subject? I’m really sick of talking about this,” she snapped.
“Yes, because anything about you is restricted information, right?” he snapped back. Before anything else could be said by either of them the bell rang for class to start. They both turned away from each other and went their separate ways to their classes.
What right did he have to nose into her business? She didn’t put him through the third degree all the time. She thought vehemently. If I want to keep my private life a secret what business is it of his? She went through her morning classes and when lunch rolled around she purposely went an entirely different direction than what she normally went to avoid him. If he didn’t care for her secretes he didn’t have to be around her. She didn’t know if he tried to find her at lunch, but she made sure that she didn’t go to an obvious place that he may find her. She did the same thing for dinner as well. She knew it was childish and that he was only concerned about what happened to her, but she was stubborn. She had gone long enough without friends and if he didn’t like the way she was she could quite easily go back to being a loner. She shouldn’t get too close to anyone anyway. She didn’t linger very long after dinner. She went back to the dorms and quickly locked herself in her room. The next morning she managed to sneak out of the dorms and slip into her new hiding place. She wasn’t really sure why she was doing this, but she didn’t want to be the one to apologize. Why should she? She hadn’t done anything wrong. So, why was she the one hiding? She wasn’t really sure, but she continued to avoid Garrick for the next week. By the time the weekend came she felt a little sad. He had obviously given up on their friendship and he wasn’t even trying to find her anymore. So, on Saturday morning she finally braved going back to the garden. On Saturdays the school gardens tended to get a little busier with students. Bored with studying or hanging out in the common areas they would often go to the gyms or the gardens. She managed to find a place in a dark corner where no one would see or bother her. Giving up her friendship was harder than it was supposed to be. She thought. Why? She had gone through her old school without getting attached to anyone. And even those friends she had made hadn’t made her feel so lonely when she had left them to come to Mead Institute. What had made this friendship different? God! Why had they fought over something so stupid! This was dumb. Why did she have to keep secrets? He already knew her biggest secret and he had never abused that. Why did she feel that she had to be so guarded all the time? He had been nothing but a good friend to her. He didn’t keep secrets from her and she had gotten mad at him for being a concerned friend. How foolish. He had other friends and no problems with talking to other people. He had only befriended her out of pity and she had pushed him away. Now, he was fed up with all the secrets and had probably decided that his other friends were easier to be around. Lost in her own little world she hadn’t really noticed that someone was casting a shadow over her from behind. “Still avoiding me then?” Garrick’s low voice asked in an attempt to sound casual. She could hear the strain and felt the tiniest bit of relief that he hadn’t given up on her just yet. She didn’t turn around for fear that he would see her relief and laugh. “Would I be here?” she asked quietly.
“I suppose not,” he sighed heavily, “I’m sorry I get so nosy, Eartha. I just want you to be able to trust me… I mean, I haven’t told anyone any of your other secrets and it just kinda feels like a slap in the face every time you close yourself off to me.”
She finally looked at him, “You shouldn’t apologize for being a concerned friend,” she replied and then quickly dropped her eyes down to the ground, “And I do trust you… more than I’ve ever trusted anyone, well, except maybe my parents. Every time I start to talk to you about myself I hear a little voice in my head that says I’m talking too much. And I automatically get defensive. It’s not because of you, Garrick. It’s because any other time when I started to talk too much something bad would happen.”
“So, you run away,” he said simply, “You climb back in you shell and make sure no one has even the slightest chance to hurt you.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” she replied.
“I’m not going to tell anyone anything you say. I won’t hurt you, I promise,” he insisted.
“No one has ever purposely gone out of their way to hurt me… It just happens,” she explained.
“Well, not with me,” he argued and she just shrugged her shoulders. He finally felt that it was okay to sit down next to her so he did. Then she surprised him by leaning her head on his shoulder and saying, “I’m sorry for being so childish.”
“Well, that is what we are,” he reminded her lightly.
“Yeah,” she agreed, “It’s too bad we’re not allowed to be.” He put an arm around her to comfort. Their friendship had been mended and a huge weight was lifted off Eartha. Thay sat in silence for a while and then to break the silence Garrick asked, “Have you had any more of the visions this past week?”
“No,” she frowned because she hadn’t really realized how quiet her mind had been for the past week until he mentioned it, “I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad sign. My dad always said that when the visions take a long time to come to him that it’s always because something bad is building up.”
“Maybe yours won’t be like that,” he offered. She nodded even though she didn’t really believe that. She had a feeling that her visions were just like her dad’s. So, what was next? This year had already begun badly and she had a feeling that it was only getting worse. She sighed heavily. She really needed to talk to her parents right now. Seeing them would make her feel a lot better. “Are you okay?” Garrick asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she whispered back.
Chapter 8
September first rolled up and no one in the Wicken family was very happy on the drive back to the subway station. Roger had not said a word to Mora or Eartha about his visions or about the conversation he had with Dr. Timmus. Eartha was still upset about her parents not believing that they were in danger and Mora didn’t have the heart to tell her daughter the truth. The subway station was packed with early morning commuters and unless one was really looking for it no one would notice the children spread out in the crowd carrying unusually large amounts of luggage. Eartha stood silently between her parents refusing to look at either of them. She couldn’t believe they were sending her back after what she had told them. Why didn’t adults ever listen to their children? She wondered.
“Okay, sweetie, it’s gonna be here any second now,” Mora said softly, “I know you’re still upset with us because you think we don’t believe you, but that’s not the reason that you have to go back to school.”
“If there is a danger out there we want you in the safest place we can put you,” Roger chimed in.
“What makes you think the school is the safest place for me?” Eartha asked.
“Well, they know for sure that there are plenty of psychics there and they haven’t attacked anyone there yet, so I’m assuming there is a reason for that,” Roger explained.
“They’ve already broken in once. What makes you think they wont do it again?” Eartha commented.
“They only took files that time,” Roger reminded her, “There is a lot of protection that Dr. Timmus has added to the school since then. I think they haven’t been able to get back in since then or they’re afraid to.”
“And you’re just going to leave yourself out in the open to be attacked?” Eartha asked.
“We’re not going to be attacked,” Mora insisted.
“We are protecting ourselves, Eartha. We will do our best to make sure nothing happens to either of us,” Roger tried to be reassuring.
“So, in other words, you don’t think you’re going to be attacked and you’re sending me back to school because you don’t believe there’s any reason to keep me at home,” Eartha shot back.
“First of all, there is no reason that you should be kept at home, regardless of whether we are in danger or not,” Roger said somewhat harshly, “Do you think I would keep you somewhere where I thought you would be in danger?” Eartha didn’t get a chance to respond because at that moment the subway pulled into the station. She only had time to give them hugs and kisses goodbye before the subway would take off again. She piled on with everyone else and quickly found a seat in the corner. She was one of the few people to actually obtain a seat and it was largely due to her small size. She looked around vainly for a familiar face, but all she saw was adult legs and torsos. She actually could have used the company of Garrick right about now. She really would have loved to get some of the anger and frustrations she had right now off her chest. She looked up and noticed that the people around her had slowly moved away from her and a few of them were actually glancing over in her direction. She realized quickly that her emotions were starting to lash out at others. She was out of practice with guarding herself. So for the rest of the ride to the school she focused on building her protective shield around herself again. She was so focused on building her shield back up that she almost missed her stop all together. She stood on the platform with a few other kids. Most of the students would be coming throughout the day. There had been schedules sent out to students a few weeks ago so it wouldn’t look so suspicious when an unusual amount of children got off on the same platform. Unfortunately, the fact that the platform was pretty much in the middle of nowhere made anyone getting off looking a little suspicious. The students kind of milled around the platform aimlessly until the subway was completely out of sight. Slowly the kids started disappearing out the door and back to school. Eartha was the last to go through the doorway. She purposely put some distance between her and the other students. She took her time getting to the main hall and then braced herself for all the kids that were bound to be hanging around the main entrance hall.
She stepped into another world the moment she stepped through the front door. The main hall was very bright and loud with student greeting the friends after a long summer. Eartha glanced around the room and felt a sinking sensation flow through her body. She wondered what it would be like to rush up to a group of friends and give them all a huge group hug. How would it be to get close to people? She sighed and moved her things towards the dorms. “Miss me?” Garrick’s lazy nonchalant voice asked from behind. She pretended not to hear him and continued to walk towards the dorms.
“Oh, my God!” he yelled out suddenly, “She’s gone deaf over summer vacation! What am I going to do now? How can I annoy her when she can’t hear me?” She spun around with an evil smile on her face. “I can hear you just fine,” she announced, “I just figured if I didn’t respond you would go away.”
“You look brown,” he commented suddenly ignoring her comment.
“And you look as pasty as ever,” she retorted.
“Gee, I missed your attitude,” he grinned pulling one of her bags out of her hands to help her out.
“It’s good to see you too,” she admitted in return. He jerked to a stop and threw one hand to his chest in false dramatics. He pretended to faint and said, “A nice comment from Eartha. The shock will kill me!”
“Are you done now?” she asked in a bored voice.
“Yeah, I think that’s good,” he said righting himself and continued to walk down the hall with her bag. She laughed and followed him. They dropped her bags on the floor and left them there.
“So, how was your summer?” he asked once they were back out in the hallway.
“It could have been worse. It could have been better,” she replied.
“You have the most unique way of saying a lot without saying a damn thing,” he laughed, “Could you be any more vague?”
“I’m sure I could if I tried a little harder,” she answered.
“So what did you do this summer? Or am I not allowed to know?” he asked.
“My parents rented out a beach house for the summer,” she said, “I was swimming most of the summer.”
“That would explain the brownness,” he chuckled.
“And I’m assuming you followed through with your skiing plans which would explain your pastiness?” she asked.
“You assumed correctly,” he nodded, “So why wasn’t your vacation fun?”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t fun,” she answered.
“But you did say it could have been better,” he shot back.
“And I still think that it could,” she said.
“What could have made it better?” he asked.
She shook her head at his relentlessness, “A pony,” she replied sarcastically making him throw his head back and laugh. “Well, it wasn’t so much the vacation that gave me a negative opinion so much as the vacation being over. I still think my parents are a target, but they don’t seem to be taking the threat too seriously. They sent me back here and it’s like I’m pretty much just waiting for the news that they were murdered.” She finally answered truthfully.
“That’s pretty morbid,” Garrick answered quietly.
“I know, but I can feel something horrible coming,” she replied.
“Maybe it’s not what you think,” he offered.
“And maybe it is,” she replied, “but no one will know for sure until it happens and I would rather be around my parents right now.”
“Well then I can see why your parents would send you here,” he said.
“What! Why?” she asked surprised and angry. He was supposed to be on her side.
“If they think they are a target they wouldn’t want to put you in danger too, right?” he explained.
“They don’t believe me!” she cried out, “And if they do they have a very funny way of showing it.”
“I’m sure they took what you said very seriously and they put you in the safest place they could think of. What if these people got a hold of you and started to use your power for their little mission?” Garrick explained. That shut her up immediately. She had been very selfish about wanting to stay with her parents. If what Garrick said was true then her parents had sent her back selflessly and here she was making them feel bad about sending her away. She shook her head and grunted in frustration. “I don’t want to talk about this right now,” she announced.
He scoffed and then asked, “Okay, so what would you like to talk about?”
She looked around and noticed that they had unintentionally come to the indoor garden. The door was unlocked and the lights were on inside. She was surprised even though she couldn’t remember a time when the garden was not open. She went inside and felt instantly at home and much calmer than she had been just moments before. “Well?” Garrick prompted her.
“Well, what?” she replied in a much lighter tone.
“What would you like to talk about?” he repeated. She had leaned over to smell one of the flowers and he knew that she was in another world right now so he didn’t press her to answer him. She drifted off further into the garden and he reluctantly followed her. She was already disappearing behind another corner and he quickened his pace to keep track of where she was going. He rounded the corner after her, but once again she was gone. He took off at a jog to find her and he could hear her laughing pretty far off. She was playing games now. He didn’t know whether to be annoyed or happy that she was no longer in a foul mood. He broke into a run determined to find her now. He saw a flash of her skirt as it disappeared around another tree. He followed it, but then he could hear her laughing from the other side. He stopped out of breath and confused. “Come on, now, you can’t give up so easily,” she called to him. He followed the sound of her voice and took off in that direction. “I will find you if it takes me all night!” he called out.
“I don’t think so,” he heard her voice behind him. He spun around and looked around to see where she had gone. Then he felt her gloved hands covering his eyes from behind. He gasped and spun around. She was standing before him with a huge grin on her face. “How did you do that?” he asked.
“It’s a secret,” she whispered. She stepped back and studied him for a moment and said. “I just noticed how much taller you got over the summer,” she commented suddenly once again quickly changing the subject.
“Yes, and you’ve remained your same old stunted self,” he replied.
“I think I’ll always be pretty small,” she said, “but since I have all these layers I’m not too concerned about it.”
Another person had entered the room she realized. Garrick still seemed to be unaware, but he noticed Eartha tense up and realized something was up. They both looked towards the door and saw Dr. Timmus standing just inside the door. “Ah, I knew I could find you both here,” he announced quietly, “Sorry to interrupt the reunion, but I need to ask you to go to the cafeteria with the rest of the students. There are some important notices that you should probably hear and you’ll probably want to eat before you go back to the dorms for the night.” Garrick quickly nodded and led the way back out of the room. Eartha paused for a moment and then followed him. Dr. Timmus slowed her down by tugging gently on her sleeve. “How have things been at home?” he asked.
“It could be better,” she replied.
Dr. Timmus nodded thoughtfully for a moment and then motioned her forward. Eartha knew that Dr. Timmus knew about everything that had been going on at her home, but he was choosing to remain silent. “No pearls of wisdom today?” she commented dryly.
“I think this is one family issue that I cannot help with,” he replied, “The only thing I have to say is that you all need to trust what the other is doing or trying to do.”
“I really don’t like your cryptic advice,” Eartha said pulling away from him and chasing after Garrick to catch up. She didn’t really want to know what Dr. Timmus had to say about her family problems.
“Hey, what was that all about?” Garrick asked as she finally caught up to him at the door of the dinning hall.
“Nothing,” she replied giving him a look that said don’t press me and he didn’t. She slumped down into a chair. This year wasn’t shaping up to be a very good one yet. The feeling that her parents were in danger was increasing and she knew that it was not just paranoia. Even Garrick had suggested that her parents knew what danger they were in and that really didn’t make her feel better. If they did believe her and they had sent her back to school for safety purposes then they felt they were in danger too. The tone in Dr. Timmus’ voice made her believe that the school year was just going to get worse from here on out. She was grinding her teeth and Garrick was giving her a strange look when she finally realized that she had completely spaced out for the past five minutes. She looked down at her food and pushed it away. She definitely was not in the mood for food. Garrick pushed her plate back in front of her. “You need to eat whether you’re in a bad mood or not,” he insisted. She sighed heavily and reluctantly took up her fork again. She knew Garrick was only looking out for her best interests, but if he had any idea what was going through her mind right now he would leave her the hell alone.
Classes started the next morning like clockwork and Eartha was actually glad to have something to focus her mind on other than her parents. She focused entirely on what her teachers were telling her. Even in her boring history class she was listening to everything that Mr. Sayers was saying. He was her least favorite teacher and it wasn’t exactly easy to willingly pay attention to him. So, when everything began to fade away she didn’t really notice at first. Her ears began to ring and when sound finally came back she wasn’t hearing what Mr. Sayers was saying. She could only hear someone sobbing. She couldn’t see anything yet, but then a light was slowly brightening the scene. She saw a woman kneeling on the ground with her back to Eartha. The woman was dressed in all black and was leaning over something. Eartha tried to get a better look, but she was frozen where she was. The woman was still sobbing, but she leaned back slightly to reveal another body on the floor. Eartha screamed and the vision faded immediately.
Mr. Sayers’ classroom reappeared instantly. She leapt out of her chair realizing everyone was staring at her. She grabbed her bag and ran from the room completely embarrassed. She took off down the hall in the direction of her dorm room. She couldn’t believe it was happening to her in the middle of the afternoon now. Wasn’t there a way for her to control this at all? And why was she getting all these horrible images of people dying? She slowed her pace slightly. She was getting a headache. Her eyes seemed to be burning so she clamped them shut, but this turned out to be a bad idea. She could hear the woman sobbing again. The vision was trying to come to her again. NO! She told herself not realizing that she said it aloud. She forced her eyes open again and a white-hot pain sliced through her brain. She felt like she couldn’t breathe anymore and she dropped to her knees. She placed her hands on the sides of her temples and moaned. “Eartha! What are you doing?” a voice asked from above and for one delirious moment she thought it was God. Someone was picking her up off the floor and carrying her away. She was still clutching the side of her head. Her breathing returned to normal and the pain began to subside, but she kept her hands where they were. She didn’t want to chance the vision trying to come back again. She looked up at who was carrying her and immediately recognized Dr. Timmus.
“You can’t will visions away,” he said to her.
“Why can’t I control them?” she moaned.
He smiled sadly, “If I could answer that the whole world would run quite a bit smoother.”
They were entering a room she did not at first recognize. Then she recognized the surroundings immediately. She was in the hospital wing. “I’m fine,” Eartha insisted, “I don’t need to be here.”
“She will be able to give you something that will relax you and reduce the chance of you having the vision. If you keep fighting the visions you will likely have a seizure,” Dr. Timmus explained, “After she gives you something, you can go back to your dorm to get some sleep.” He set Eartha down on one of the many empty beds and left. Eartha looked around, but saw no one. Normally she felt safer when she was alone, but the silence was actually making her uncomfortable. She shifted to look around the room. If no one was going to come she was going back to her room. She swung her legs off the bed and was about to stand up when the door finally creaked open at the far end of the room. The nurse entered the room. “Might as well swing those legs back up on the bed,” she said brusquely, “It will take a moment to fix up what Dr. Timmus wants me to give you. And if the vision starts to come back before I’m done just let it come. I don’t need you having a seizure on me.” She walked to the cabinets in the corner and unlocked the doors. Inside Eartha could see a number of jars full of mysterious liquids. Eartha watched her mix a few of the liquids together and then surprised herself by saying, “I understand that people can’t will visions to come to them, but I don’t understand why I can’t stop them from coming at any hour of the day.”
“I guess it’s much like any psychic ability,” the nurse replied in a much nicer tone than she had earlier, reminding Eartha that she liked the nurse from the last time she helped her, “If we could control our powers we could rule the world.” She laughed and looked over her shoulder at Eartha who wasn’t smiling. “I’m surprised that you, of all people, would think there was a way of controlling something like this.”
“I can heal just about anything,” Eartha commented, “But I couldn’t heal the pain that comes with the visions.”
“I haven’t met a person yet who can,” the nurse replied, “But I must emphasize the more you fight them, the more painful they will become.” She had finished with her concoction at this point and brought it over to Eartha. It was maybe a tablespoon of a dark green liquid in a small vial. Eartha wasn’t so sure about the liquid, but was more afraid that the nurse would force it down her throat if she refused. She gulped the liquid quickly hoping it didn’t have much of an aftertaste. It burned her throat as it flowed down to her stomach, but it didn’t seem to have a taste at all. “Okay, that should take a couple of minutes to take effect. It should be enough time for you to hurry back to your dorm room. You’ll know when it hits you,” the woman smiled which made Eartha even more uncomfortable, but she just nodded and rushed out of the room. Apparently no one really cared about the last few classes she was going to be missing.
She locked herself in her room and before she had a chance to turn her light on or take her boots off the whole room seemed to tilt forward. She gasped at the sudden attack at her equilibrium. As she walked forward to her bed the floor seemed to tilt with each step, but she managed to make it without falling. The world spun and twisted around her and then a heavy dreamless sleep fell over her. The mixture the nurse had given her was strong and lasted through the night and up to the next morning. Eartha woke from the noise of the other students getting ready for their classes. This was rare since Eartha was normally up and out of the dorm by the time the others were waking up. She rushed to get ready for breakfast. She had missed dinner the night before and was unusually hungry. She left the dorm without saying a word to anyone and no one seemed to notice. She really didn’t like the rushed feeling. The hallway was pretty empty, thankfully. There was only one student at the far end and he seemed to be coming back towards the dorms. “Hey!” the kid called out to her. She narrowed her eyes to see who was hailing her. Who else? It was Garrick.
“Hi,” she said unenthusiastically. She felt completely out of whack. All she wanted to do was fall back into the shadows and feel normal again.
“You weren’t around last night and I’ve heard some rather odd versions of what happened to you,” he inquired. He was trying to play casual, but obviously one of the outlandish rumors had gotten him concerned. She tried to muster a smile and she waved off his concerns, “It was another vision,” she said casually, “It came in Mr. Sayers class and I tried to stop it. Apparently that’s not a good idea.”
“What happened?” he asked. Her casualness wasn’t easing his mind.
“Nothing. I went to the nurse and she gave me something to sleep without dreams,” she explained cutting out the part where she felt like she was going to die when she couldn’t breathe and the part where Dr. Timmus had to carry her to the nurse.
“That’s all?” he asked unbelieving.
“Yep, except I overslept because of whatever it was that she gave me,” Eartha tried to reassure him, “I feel kind of out of it right now.”
“You look kind of out of it,” he agreed. The walked together towards the dinning hall. She mused over his concern. It wasn’t that it was all that unusual for him to be concerned about her. She knew he cared a great deal for her. It was that he had believed whatever rumors he had heard about what had happened. It was quite uncharacteristic for him. He usually didn’t believe anything that he didn’t see with his own two eyes. She laughed suddenly and caught him off guard. “What on earth did you hear about me that got you so concerned?” Garrick suddenly turned bright red and looked away.
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t necessarily put it that way,” he said quickly.
“What way?” she asked.
“It wasn’t that I was worried or anything. I was just wondering where you were, that’s all,” he replied.
“I didn’t say you were worried. I asked why you were so concerned,” she corrected him.
“Yeah, I was concerned,” he said defensively, “You’re my friend and I thought something bad might have happened to you… or your parents.” He added that last part under his breath.
“What about my parents?” she asked.
“Well, one of the rumors that was flying around was that you had a vision about your parents being killed and that you jumped up out of you seat and ran out of Mr. Sayers class,” he explained, “You know I’m not one for believing rumors, but with as worried as you’ve been about your parents I thought there might actually be some truth to it this time.”
“It wasn’t about my parents,” she assured him, “I don’t know who they were. I tried to stop the vision and it gave me a really horrible headache. So, I couldn’t really see what the people looked like. The woman seemed really familiar, but it wasn’t my mother.”
“What happened in your vision?” he asked timidly afraid she would snap at him.
“It was a woman crying over the body of a man. I couldn’t see either of their faces and I tried to stop the vision,” she said simply, “I don’t want to know about any more deaths.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” he agreed, “Were you able to stop it?”
“Kind of,” she said, “temporarily, but it tried to come back again and I tried to stop it again, but it hurt. Dr. Timmus told me that if I kept trying to stop them I would probably have a seizure.”
“When did Dr. Timmus come into the picture?” he asked. Oh, damn! She should have stopped talking a long time ago. She realized.
“He saw me in the hallway after I left Mr. Sayers classroom,” she explained really wishing she hadn’t gotten into this conversation with him.
“Hmm,” Garrick replied scrunching up his face.
“What?” she asked not really wanting to know what he was thinking but knowing that he was going to tell her anyway.
“Well, I was just wondering what Dr. Timmus was doing walking through the halls. I mean, he’s a pretty busy man and he’s not the type of person to take a leisure walk through the hallways. Do you think he knew something was going to happen?” he asked.
“I don’t know, maybe. Or maybe he was reading my thoughts and felt the need to see exactly what was up,” she replied trying to dismiss this subject. Garrick wasn’t so willing to let it die. “Does he normally come to your aid when you have visions?”
“No, but I usually don’t try to stop them either. Can we please drop this subject? I’m really sick of talking about this,” she snapped.
“Yes, because anything about you is restricted information, right?” he snapped back. Before anything else could be said by either of them the bell rang for class to start. They both turned away from each other and went their separate ways to their classes.
What right did he have to nose into her business? She didn’t put him through the third degree all the time. She thought vehemently. If I want to keep my private life a secret what business is it of his? She went through her morning classes and when lunch rolled around she purposely went an entirely different direction than what she normally went to avoid him. If he didn’t care for her secretes he didn’t have to be around her. She didn’t know if he tried to find her at lunch, but she made sure that she didn’t go to an obvious place that he may find her. She did the same thing for dinner as well. She knew it was childish and that he was only concerned about what happened to her, but she was stubborn. She had gone long enough without friends and if he didn’t like the way she was she could quite easily go back to being a loner. She shouldn’t get too close to anyone anyway. She didn’t linger very long after dinner. She went back to the dorms and quickly locked herself in her room. The next morning she managed to sneak out of the dorms and slip into her new hiding place. She wasn’t really sure why she was doing this, but she didn’t want to be the one to apologize. Why should she? She hadn’t done anything wrong. So, why was she the one hiding? She wasn’t really sure, but she continued to avoid Garrick for the next week. By the time the weekend came she felt a little sad. He had obviously given up on their friendship and he wasn’t even trying to find her anymore. So, on Saturday morning she finally braved going back to the garden. On Saturdays the school gardens tended to get a little busier with students. Bored with studying or hanging out in the common areas they would often go to the gyms or the gardens. She managed to find a place in a dark corner where no one would see or bother her. Giving up her friendship was harder than it was supposed to be. She thought. Why? She had gone through her old school without getting attached to anyone. And even those friends she had made hadn’t made her feel so lonely when she had left them to come to Mead Institute. What had made this friendship different? God! Why had they fought over something so stupid! This was dumb. Why did she have to keep secrets? He already knew her biggest secret and he had never abused that. Why did she feel that she had to be so guarded all the time? He had been nothing but a good friend to her. He didn’t keep secrets from her and she had gotten mad at him for being a concerned friend. How foolish. He had other friends and no problems with talking to other people. He had only befriended her out of pity and she had pushed him away. Now, he was fed up with all the secrets and had probably decided that his other friends were easier to be around. Lost in her own little world she hadn’t really noticed that someone was casting a shadow over her from behind. “Still avoiding me then?” Garrick’s low voice asked in an attempt to sound casual. She could hear the strain and felt the tiniest bit of relief that he hadn’t given up on her just yet. She didn’t turn around for fear that he would see her relief and laugh. “Would I be here?” she asked quietly.
“I suppose not,” he sighed heavily, “I’m sorry I get so nosy, Eartha. I just want you to be able to trust me… I mean, I haven’t told anyone any of your other secrets and it just kinda feels like a slap in the face every time you close yourself off to me.”
She finally looked at him, “You shouldn’t apologize for being a concerned friend,” she replied and then quickly dropped her eyes down to the ground, “And I do trust you… more than I’ve ever trusted anyone, well, except maybe my parents. Every time I start to talk to you about myself I hear a little voice in my head that says I’m talking too much. And I automatically get defensive. It’s not because of you, Garrick. It’s because any other time when I started to talk too much something bad would happen.”
“So, you run away,” he said simply, “You climb back in you shell and make sure no one has even the slightest chance to hurt you.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” she replied.
“I’m not going to tell anyone anything you say. I won’t hurt you, I promise,” he insisted.
“No one has ever purposely gone out of their way to hurt me… It just happens,” she explained.
“Well, not with me,” he argued and she just shrugged her shoulders. He finally felt that it was okay to sit down next to her so he did. Then she surprised him by leaning her head on his shoulder and saying, “I’m sorry for being so childish.”
“Well, that is what we are,” he reminded her lightly.
“Yeah,” she agreed, “It’s too bad we’re not allowed to be.” He put an arm around her to comfort. Their friendship had been mended and a huge weight was lifted off Eartha. Thay sat in silence for a while and then to break the silence Garrick asked, “Have you had any more of the visions this past week?”
“No,” she frowned because she hadn’t really realized how quiet her mind had been for the past week until he mentioned it, “I’m not sure if that’s a good sign or a bad sign. My dad always said that when the visions take a long time to come to him that it’s always because something bad is building up.”
“Maybe yours won’t be like that,” he offered. She nodded even though she didn’t really believe that. She had a feeling that her visions were just like her dad’s. So, what was next? This year had already begun badly and she had a feeling that it was only getting worse. She sighed heavily. She really needed to talk to her parents right now. Seeing them would make her feel a lot better. “Are you okay?” Garrick asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she whispered back.
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